I don’t particularly care for cooking, so I try to find ways to reduce the time I spend on it.  For instance, I just spent about 5 hours cooking.  I buy large quantities of hamburger, and chicken and process them all, then vacuum pack and freeze them; some I freeze as full dinners – garlic lime chicken, meatloaf, Swedish meatballs – and some as ready-to-use for other dishes.  Bags of cooked burger may end up as stroganoff, spaghetti, chili or tacos; shredded chicken may be chicken alfredo, burritos, or Jillian Likes It Rice Casserole.  It gives me an incredible feeling of security to have all those dinners in the freezer, ready at a moments’ notice, tasting like they were just made.  One long day of cooking gives me two months of benefits!

However, there just are some foods that don’t lend themselves to being done this way.  Macaroni and cheese?  Yeah, freezing just doesn’t work.  Our favorite Scandihoovian pancake-type dish, aebleskivers, simply must be hot out of that lovely dimpled pan or they’re just not …. aebleskiver!  I suspect souffles would probably fall in this category, too.

I’m afraid I sometimes seem to think I could run my spiritual life like I do my cooking.  I could spend a nice, long afternoon doing reading and prayer, and then I’d start making my bags.  I would make a few bags of patience, for example.  Faithfulness.  Forgiveness.  I’d prepare some gentle answers, and a some encouragement.  Hope would make a nice package, too.  For the really desperate, last minute times, there would be prayer and trust.  Maybe I could just get a dehydrator for the Fruit of the Spirit.  (Fruit leather, anyone?)  Once I had all everything nicely bagged up, I could toss them in storage and never give them another thought until I needed one, then – voila! – pull it out and all would be well.  One afternoon’s spiritual work for several months’ sanctification!

Doesn’t work that way, though, does it?  The disciplines and virtues of the Christian life need to be fresh daily.  If we haven’t been working on developing patience along the way, it’s foolish to think that when some big test of it comes along it’s suddenly going to be there.  If we haven’t been practicing forgiveness in all the little things that happen in life, how much harder will it be to forgive when a truly horrendous thing happens?  If we don’t work on trusting Him when we can see at least part of our way, it will be hard going to trust Him when we find ourselves in the deep dark.  God certainly is merciful and may grant the “prayer of last resort” – but how much better to be in such constant communication that prayer is our first line of defense rather than the “last desperate measure”!

Just as His mercies are new every morning, so should our journey with Him be.  It can be good to have the occasional long day of concentrated spiritual preparation, the weekend retreat, the conference, but those can never take the place of the day in and day out, step by step walk with Him.  As others have said, little things done frequently matter more than great things done infrequently!

All this talk of cooking is making me hungry.  Think I’ll go find a snack…  There are brownies in the kitchen – FRESH, not frozen!