Potluck Life

Sometimes life is like a potluck.  And the people in our lives are like the food.  At a potluck people bring all kinds of food--main dishes, finger foods, desserts...and mysteries. 

Sometimes we find that someone has brought a dish that looks and tastes absolutely delicious.  We serve ourselves a helping with anticipation of its goodness, and when we finish, we immediately go back to see if there's more.  It's a likeable dish, and we enjoy it immensely. 

Other times we find that the dish we thought was going to be delicious is actually not so great.  We thought it had chicken in it, but it was really tuna.  We thought the green stuff was peas, but it's something unidentifiable.  And the person who made it clearly has no knowledge of what spices go with what because whatever they combined leaves a terrible taste in our mouths.  The dish we hoped to enjoy has let us down.  It wasn't what we thought. We have mistaken the sour cream for whip cream and are now paying for it.

Then there is the dish that looks questionable, but we try it anyway, only to find it is the best thing on the table.  We savor every bite.  The joy of eating it is only intensified by the fact that we have found a treasure in the least likely place.

Let us not forget the food that we have to eat whether we want to or not, which can either be tasty or the kind of food we need a glass of water nearby to wash it down.  Relating it back to life, this is even more difficult when we have God saying to us (so to speak), "You must eat this food and you must love this food.  You can't just throw it away.  You can't avoid putting it on your plate, because I want you to have it and have specifically put it on your plate.  Nor can you try to "fix it" and make it taste better.  You have to take it as it is." 

The nice thing is that He makes sure there are plenty of the other kinds of food on our plates as well.  And sometimes, I think He helps us eat it.