Cookie Recipe of Life

 

Last week, we explored your first job as well as the experiences and encounters that are part of the book of your life.  We acknowledged that no one is an isolated, individual island.  You were not born in a vacuum.  The “you” that reflects in the mirror each morning is a compilation and amalgamation of your family, friends, and everything else that you carry in the invisible luggage of your life.  Yes, we all want to be unique individuals, but even if you were Tarzan raised alone in the jungle, you would have been nurtured and nourished by the berries you ate, the dirt the soles of your feet touched, and the other creatures who called that space home.  We are all a messy mixture ~ like the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking soda, and chocolate chips that goes into the cookie recipe of your life. 

 

I invite you this morning to consider who are some of the people from the past who formed and fashioned your life.  This could be family, friends, college roommates, colleagues at your first job where you slogged through long hours, pew mates you sat alongside in church over the years.  Write down the names of people whose faces you still see in the family album of your life.

 

Next, think about people today whose threads of their life are twisted and tangled with yours.  Family, friends you go to the theater with, serve on committees with, sing along side, and share meals on Friday nights.

 

Finally, are there people who you prefer not to interact with?  Are there people you’ve pushed to the margins of your life, praying they will just go away?  Note that Saul thought that the way to “win” at life was to defeat or even destroy his enemies.  We still turn to this “wisdom” in our life.  We think we can kill our way to peace, that if they win, we lose ~ that just the way life goes.  But what if the story is not that simple?  What if the story is contradictory and complex and incomprehensible?  There is that wonderful wisdom in African of ubuntu – I am only because we are.  And the “we” there is more inclusive and embracing than you or I could ever imagine.  The “we” is larger than any circle we can draw or define in our life.  The “we” keeps expanding beyond the horizons we can control.  Name the “we”, the tribe, the people who are like a fountain filling your life.  Name the “we” the people who push your buttons and drain your life.  Name the “we” who you don’t even know exists in the 8 billion who call this planet home (the truth is, you really don’t know many of that 8 billion at all, despite the number of friends on Facebook!).  I am because we are.  Or as Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and whole self…and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  If we can direct our energy and effort those embracing and embodying those words today, by God’s grace, it will be enough.  Amen.