Simply the Best

Wayne and I were recently visiting a very sweet family with whom we stayed for a week, and we had such wonderful fellowship together.  The purpose of our trip was to attend some meetings, but we were getting along so well with our hosts that we decided to have a meal together.  I was so very excited about this because the man was from India originally, and his wife was from New Zealand, but she had spent nearly 15 years in India doing mission work.  The promise of a delicious homemade curry had my mouth watering for a few days until the night arrived.  When we walked in the door, the aroma that hit me was so amazing that my stomach immediately started begging for food! 

I don't know if you've ever had a homemade curry before...not the kind where you buy a jar of spice at the store that says "curry" but the kind where someone lovingly selects the appropriate spices, toasts and grinds them, makes the paste ever so slowly and deliberately and then combines this with the freshest ingredients available.  A meal like this in the United States is rare, indeed, unless you happen to be friends with a family from another area of the world altogether.  And this meal in question was at the top of my favorite meals eaten in the home of a friend! 

Wayne and I ate and ate.  The rice was perfect, and the curry was over the top!  We had almost finished eating when the wife happened to mention that the curry would be delicious with fish or chicken but that they were fasting from meat.  That was when I realized that our curry had been poured over boiled eggs.  Now you have to understand that I am about as carnivorous as they come, but I hadn't even noticed that there wasn't any actual meat in this dish.  It was that fantastic!  I will probably dream of it for years until I get back to that state and visit with that family again! 

Something struck me about that meal.  While it was humble, it was one of the most delicious meals anyone has ever cooked for us.  Very often, I feel pressure to perform for others.  I think that every dish, every story, every setting must be outstanding enough to "wow" the other people.  That's so silly.  Isn't it usually the mundane done very well that impresses us the most? 

My father is a gifted man.  He can build a home from the ground up, pouring the foundation, laying the plumbing and the wiring, studding the house and walling it in.  He can even lay the brick on the exterior and finish the roof!  Besides all that, he has a sermon on the tip of his tongue at any given moment.  If I am looking for a scripture and can't seem to find it, I call him, and he gives it to me without much thought.  But this is not what impresses me.

I am impressed with the simplicity of his faith and his diligence in service to the Lord.  If the Bible says it is so, he believes it.  In all his years as a Christian (and it's a lot), he has only missed one day reading his Bible.  (He was in the hospital on that one day and being prepped for a surgery which he ultimately did not need because God had already provided for his healing.)  But every other day of his walk with the Lord begins early in the morning...before the rest of us rise... He sits in his chair and reads the Word of God.  Period.  This is the mundane done very well - so much so that it rises to a place of adoration in my heart.

God doesn't ask us to be flamboyant with Him.  He doesn't want us to go all out to impress Him.  What He does want is our faithfulness.  In this simple way, we touch His heart and present our sweet and fragrant lives to Him, and in this simple way, He is pleased.

Barney and Gill, thanks for the curry!  I can't wait to come again!

Restaurant suggestion:  Break out of your rut and try a real Indian restaurant!  You may love some dishes and only like others, but you will be pleased that you tried!