In 2006, I lived in Nashville for one year. There was a duck pond across the street from my apartment complex. Around the duck pond was a walking path where I met a friend every morning for a three-mile walk. Six laps around the path was a mile. When my friend couldn’t make it one morning, I found myself walking eighteen laps by myself. After about the third lap, I was bored silly. I began to look for ways to distract myself. I quickly decided prayer was the solution. That lasted about half a lap before I started thinking about what I was going to cook for dinner that night and what was going to be on TV. As the laps seemed to get longer and longer and just when I was tempted to quit another idea came to mind – find God at the duck pond.
Focusing on the things I was seeing, I started to think about how they reminded me of God. For example, when I came to a lamppost, I said to God, “Thank you for being the light of the world. Thank you that I do not walk in spiritual darkness but I live in the kingdom of light.” There were some people on a bridge feeding the ducks, which reminded me that God gives food to every creature. As I looked at the beautiful trees, the green leaves reminded me that when I trust in the Lord and make him my confidence, I am like a tree planted by water whose leaves are always green and never fails to bear fruit. Before I knew it, I had finished all eighteen laps, which made me feel good, but something much more important happened. I encountered God in a fresh new way as I went about my daily routine.
Too often we limit meeting with God to perceived “spiritual” settings—places like church on Sunday morning, small groups, a Bible study or even our quiet times. Clearly, he is in those places, but he is not limited to just those places. We know this in our heads, but we don’t always live it out in our lives. We look for God at church, but do we look for him in our kitchens?
Covid-19 and being quarantined at home has been challenging. Yet, it has also given us opportunities to look for God in other places. Encountering God in your kitchen is really about encountering an extraordinary God in the ordinary places in our lives. I started to title this post, Five Ways to Find God in Your Laundry, but I was afraid no one would read it. Since I didn’t want the article to be a wash, I chose the kitchen instead. So, here are few ways that I have found God in my kitchen.
Burnt Toast – Let’s face it, there are some days when I am just having a bad day and nothing is going right. Cooking a meal feels like an obstacle course or something as simple as burning my toast can be a rough start to my day. When this happens and I look for God, I am reminded that “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
Fruits & Nuts – Years ago, I heard a messaged entitled, God is looking for spiritual fruit, not religious nuts. At the time, I thought it was a funny and creative title, but the speaker’s message planted a seed in my heart. As a rule-follower by nature, I have to be careful that I don’t allow my “doing for God” to overshadow my “being with God.” In my kitchen, you will always find fruit and nuts. I love both, and they remind me of John 15:5. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Grapes, apples, and especially bananas remind me I am less tempted to act like a religious nut when I spend time with Jesus.
Messy Meatloaf – God got messy when he made us. It’s true. We see it in scripture when he created Adam and Eve. What stands out to me in the creation story is how God speaks almost everything into creation, but when he created Adam, the Bible tells us he formed the man out of the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils (Genesis 2:7). Then, he takes a rib from Adam’s body and forms Eve (Genesis 2:21-22). After Adam and Eve disobey God and sin enters the world along with death and disease, God stays involved rather than washing his hands of humanity.
Thousands of years later, we find Jesus, the Son of God, who created Adam, healing a blind man. Though he could have spoken, once again we see the creator being hands-on. In John 9:2, we are told that “Jesus spit on the ground and made mud. He put the mud on the man’s eyes and told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” If you close your eyes and picture Jesus’ hands, you can see the dried mud on his fingers, which brings me back to meatloaf. When I make messy, yummy meatloaf in my kitchen, it reminds me that God gets involved in our messy lives. He’s never afraid to get his hands dirty as he redeems the places that have been marred in our lives. He even tells us that he is like a potter who forms and shapes our lives as seems best to him (Jeremiah 18:3-4).
Finding God in my kitchen isn’t hard to do. I just have to be willing to look. The next time you grab a cookie, enjoy a bowl of ice cream, or have pancakes for dinner, don’t let the opportunity pass to find your extraordinary God in an ordinary place. Desserts and snacks are one of the best ways to remember that God wants us to know and to experience him. After all, he does tell us to taste and see that he is good (Psalm 34:8).
– Pamela Hall
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