Christmas Cookies

Christmas cookies are dangerous! They are all so tiny. You think that if you have just one…at a time…you won’t find them collecting on your thighs…but they still do.

Then, you begin to think that, maybe, if I “sneak” a cookie, without anyone knowing…then, perhaps, their caloric value is eliminated…or, at the very least, diminished…but again…it doesn’t…cookies are still dangerous.

I was a wrestler in High School, and Christmas always brought into focus the deflating obligation of weight management.  I learned to overcome the pull of Christmas goodies by sneaking them out of the freezer when no one was looking...if you are hungry enough…frozen cookies won’t deter you…(you might chip a tooth…but hey…Christmas cookies are dangerous).  Plus, if no one knows that you snuck a cookie…then the cookie doesn’t count!  Often, when I would sneak a cookie, I could justify it by convincing myself that I could burn the cookie off later…4 laps per cookie. Before I knew it, I had obligated myself 24 laps for my morning run…Christmas cookies are dangerous.  This strategy worked great…until Christmas.  My mother discovered that all of the Christmas goodies were gone! Ooops…I guess I got carried away!...Christmas cookies are dangerous.

“Who ate all of the Christmas cookies!?...I know it wasn’t the boys ‘cuz they have to manage their weight for wrestling.”

“Hmmm…should I tell her?...No…I’ll let Dad take the heat…”

And he did!

The other day, my wife…who shall remain nameless…tried to sneak a Christmas cookie from the freezer.  She didn’t have the same expertise or experience in nabbing a frozen cookie un-noticed.  She decided to put it in the microwave for a few seconds to thaw it.  Unfortunately for her…her 13 seconds inadvertently turned into 13 minutes.  Ooops!...Christmas cookies are dangerous.  Should have just eaten the frozen cookie!

Her little ginger cookie…transformed into a little ginger hockey puck.

If we actually had working smoke detectors…the kids would surely have awakened to find their sneaky mother, trying to hide a hockey puck in the garbage.  Instead, I was the sole individual left to laugh and mock her.

I am amazed at cooks and chemists.  I find it fascinating how people can develop recipes and new chemical compounds by putting different ingredients or chemicals together, to create something brand new!

If you combine egg yolks, corn starch, milk, coconut and sugar in a pot…and stir it continually, until it has boiled for 1 minute…the ingredients are transformed into an amazing coconut cream pie! (some details of the recipe have been omitted).

Our lives are intended to be transformed.  We have not been created to stay the same.  We have not been created to stay idle.  Rather, we have been created to continually be transformed into the men and women that God has planned for us to be, before we were ever knit together in our mothers’ wombs.

Our lives need to reflect that transformation.  We should be able to look back to who we were 1 year ago…and see that we are different today.

Titus 3:5 says, "...He saves us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit..."

God is doing a regenerating work in us...if we let him.

Are you different today?

Will you be different a year from now?