This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt. The prompt for today is “stir.”
Go.
Thinking of ‘stir’, all I could think of was making my thick soups (sloups), custard and Béchamel sauce – stuff that if you stir it well, becomes smooth and creamy, but if you don’t, it becomes lumpy, stuck, burnt and in some way spoiled.
This showed me something, because it always seems such an effort, such a faff to stand stirring ALL the time. I am often tempted to just stir every now and then, when I think it necessary, or to wait until it is thoroughly hot before stirring, convinced that, because I want it to work out well, it will.
But, you know, it doesn’t!
I am lazy making soups and sauces and I am lazy in many other areas of my life.
Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV
‘And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.‘
It takes effort to stir myself up and more so to stir up one another.
It takes sacrifice to encourage and to turn up and be willing to listen generously in order to build others up.
But if I don’t stir myself to love and good works, I become lumpy, burnt, stuck and less than my best.
If I am too lazy to make an effort to love other sinners like myself, the church becomes lumpy, sick and spoiled in some way.
If I focus on what I feel like doing, rather than on what love calls my renewed mind to do, then God’s will is not done through me today.
If I do not stir and build, eventually those around me, and myself, begin to starve.
Let us commit to focusing not on just being fed and stirred by others, but to be grown up, mature followers of Christ, who are willing to work together to prepare for the banquet of the Lord.
end
dawnfanshawe 