She carefully measured the flour, leveling each cup before dumping it into the mixing bowl. She did the same with the sugar, the salt, the baking powder, and the sifted cocoa. She whisked it all together. She stooped down to account for the meniscus as she measured the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Switching from whisk to spatula, she folded the ingredients together until they were “just mixed”. Then she carefully spread the batter into a baking dish, spread it out gently, and slid the pan into the center of a preheated oven. Halfway through she rotated the pan. When the timer beeped again poked it with a toothpick, smiling when it came out clean. The perfect, fluffy, moist cake cooled on the rack, waiting for frosting, almost ready to be enjoyed.
Meanwhile, at the fridge, “What’s for dinner?” “I don’t know what do we got? Half an onion, some kale, left over sausage, and rice from the Chinese restaurant, oh, and that summer sausage should probably be eaten too.” He heated some oil and started sauteing the onion. When it started to turn translucent, he started browning the sausage. Next he added diced summer squash, a few cranks of salt and pepper, and cooked until everything was browned and cooked through. By now a gorgeous fond developed on the bottom of the pan. He checked the fridge again, do we have any leftover broth? Maybe an open bottle of wine? Some sherry? Or would a balsamic vinegar be a better match? He deglazed the pan, simmering all the flavors together into a delicious sauce, then he added the rice, wilted the kale, tasted, put in a few fresh herbs and necessary spices and salted and peppered to taste. Leftovers were new again. As my favorite internet chef says, “That’s just you cookin’”
Baking is an exact science. A small change to the ratios of ingredients can drastically change the results. You never salt and pepper cookies “to taste”. Though sometimes when you cook you might follow a recipe exactly, and measure all the ingredients precisely, often in cooking you do what you feel. You use what you have. The methods are often as important as the ingredients. The flavors have to complement each other, but cooking gives you great freedom in how you can get the most out of your ingredients. You can make an edible, even delicious dinner, from a variety, sometimes random ingredients.
Sometimes we try to treat our lives like baking. We have it all planned out and measured precisely. You expect an exact result. You can meet a young man with a plan. He has a skill. He is going to work hard, invest, and grow. When he is secure, he’ll look for a wife, start a family, send the kids to college, and retire comfortably. He knows if he uses what he has been given and times things right, everything should turn out. A young woman applies to the best colleges. She has a major, a profession, even a few companies in mind. She pushes herself, graduates high in her high school class, then studies hard, graduates Summa Cum Laude. She works her way up and puts off a family until she has reached her goal. No matter what you want to get out of life, in America we have assumed their was a recipe to make it turn out.
For most of my lifetime, the most basic recipe in the United States for a good life had just a few ingredients: graduate high school and wait until you are married to have children. Following this recipe, made it highly unlikely that you would end up in poverty. Still, guidance counselors advise most kids to go to college. “Go to college, get a good job.” Period. No matter what side of the political aisle a person may be on, everyone wanted this recipe to remain the same. Put it in the oven, rotate halfway through, cook for 20 years, retire happy. Just like baking a cake.
Our favorite cookbook is America’s Test Kitchen. Other than the crab cake fiasco, everything we have ever made out of that book has been delicious. However, though I have learned many things about cooking in general, most of the recipes in this book resemble baking more than cooking, precise. For most of the recipes you need the exact ingredients, the perfect thick cut of meat, saffron or vanilla bean, a specific hard to find noodle, or spices no one has ever heard of. Though the food is always delicious, it isn’t always best for cooking on a budget. Nor does it help you use the ingredients you have on hand. Cooking many of the recipes are the privilege of those with the time, money, and ability to pull it off.
Some of those ingredients to a good American life are for the privileged. In some places they can be hard to find. The recipe assumes two parent homes, enough money to pay the bills (and a little more if you want to start a business, retire, or send a kid to college. In addition a stable and growing economy, safe and secure neighborhoods, a just justice system, good health, and a clear view of the future. Once you start crossing ingredients off that list, life gets harder to turn out. When something goes wrong in the process, it is hard to salvage. Sometimes, you realize you don’t have an ingredient you were sure you did, where did good health go? Have you seen a stable economy? Where did we put the safety? They aren’t in the fridge where we expected them to be. What then? How can you make things work out then?
Over the last year, our ingredients seem to be lacking. Things we always expected to have on hand are now in short supply. Peace and justice, prosperity and health, security and a clear path to the future, are running low. Out of ignorance, indulgence, or carelessness we have used up some of the ingredients we needed for life. Mental health is a nationwide crisis. Debt is staggering. Common sense and common knowledge are uncommon. Communities are fragmented. I could go on.
So what is a Christian supposed to do? What is our recipe for life? How can we get life to turn out when so many of the pieces we thought we could depend on are missing or in short supply? Should we hoard the good things for ourselves? Do we give up? Do we get angry, frustrated, and complain? Throw a tantrum like I did when my crab cakes fell apart? Or has God provided more than a recipe?
Psalm 19 describes God’s recipe for us. The One who hung the stars in the sky, the One to whom all creation’s praises rise, The Lord has spoken to us. He has given his law for our own good. The law of the LORD is perfect. It revives the soul. The Testimony of the LORD is trustworthy. It gives wisdom to the inexperienced. The precepts of the LORD are right. They give joy to the heart. The commandment of the LORD is bright. It gives light to the eyes…The decrees of the LORD are truth…they are sweeter than honey, even honey dripping from the honeycomb.
When we cook, with or without an exact recipe, things have to be done in the right order. Some of the steps are more important than the others. Some slips or mistakes can be more easily fixed, while other ruin everything. No matter what ingredients life gives us, God’s law sets our lives in order. Even the sequence of the commandments instructs us. Property cannot be valued above life. A good chaste, truthful and caring life grows out of the home and a good and stable society. Our lives will never be full. We will never be satisfied. We can never come out of life blessed, forever blessed, unless we are first right with God. All these commands are more valuable than gold, but if we try to arrange them out of order things won’t turn out right.
When we observe God’s law and apply it to our lives, we see God’s love and wisdom in them. When we follow their order, we know how it will turn out. I don’t know what the future will hold. I can’t guarantee that any of my plans will turn out or that I will have everything I think I need, but the Lord has given his instruction for me to follow. Christ has kept these instructions perfectly; he has ensured how it will all turn out. He will forgive, fix, and perfect all the works we do in him. Let’s keep cookin’, following God’s recipe, because we know when we do, by God’s blessing God makes all things come out for our good.
One of my favorite mini-segments of America’s test kitchen is the “Science of Cooking” where the little details of cooking are explained so that the viewer not only how to cook, but why it makes the food better. This is the start of a series to look closely at God’s commands and also how they benefit us in our lives. Suggested reading: Exodus 20, The Ten Commandments-the Small Catechism, and The Ten Commandments-The Large Catechism