Today, I would like to provide you with a practical, real-life lesson and application:
How to Semi-Effectively Clean Up A Smashed Jar of Salsa
1. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and say a silent prayer for the Lord to forgive you of the very loud and prominent obscenity you just yelled as you watched your new quart jar of homemade salsa crash onto the floor.
2. Shuffle the pup out of doors so he is not inclined to “help” with clean up.
3. Put on shoes as to avoid glass shards in the feet.
4. Clean up the glassy salsa with whatever tools you have available (might I recommend: An old dust pan and empty Diet Dr. Pepper box)
5. Mop and/or vacuum a couple times to ensure any nearly invisible tiny glass shards don’t, in fact, end up in your feet.
6. Continue with your lunch and ask God how or what you can learn from this experience. (Other than don’t let clumsy people with wet hands handle salsa jars when they are in a hurry to eat their nachos for lunch.)
This is what my treasured jar of salsa looked like BEFORE it hit the floor…
Clean up on aisle 3! Anyone? No? Sigh.
True story, folks. As I was moving towards step 6, I stepped into the bathroom to wash my hands. I looked in the mirror and literally laughed– in the few minutes of my salsa-crisis, my cheeks were flushed, my messy ponytail became messier and I somehow ended up with a bird feather in my hair. (I’m not kidding. The only explanation would be when I went outside to get the old dustpan, a tiny little feather made its way to my bird nest of hair.)
As I was trying to gather my nerves and frustration (hey, homemade salsa from back home is a treasured commodity down in these parts!) I literally prayed for God to tell me what I could learn from this…
My brain immediately flashed to 2 Corinthians 4:7~
“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”
Huh. Ok, Lord. Cool.
So I sat with that for a while and realized that my little salsa mess was not just a mess– it was a sweet (spicy?) message.
That jar of salsa brought me to scripture that reminded me that when we try to be perfect on the outside, God’s power and goodness can’t be seen. So we either have to be very transparent (think: glass jar of salsa) or allow God to crack open our shell of perfection so that His inner light can shine.
As I marinated on this idea (and continued to mourn the loss of my salsa) my thoughts were drawn to the upcoming bible study that we are hosting here at 7 Days Time. In case you missed our big announcement last week, starting Sept. 9th my friend Kelli and I are going to be teaching Linda Dillow’s study “Calm My Anxious Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Contentment” in person at Christ Community Church. But for all of my non-local peeps, (which is a vast majority) we are going to do an online version of the study starting September 10th.
And I don’t know about you– but one of the things that sometimes makes me anxious is being vulnerable and letting other people see my brokenness.
Kinda like that messy jar of salsa on my kitchen floor.
So, if your life has ever felt more frustrating than of dropping a jar of salsa (or pickles, or jelly or whatever) on the floor, or you worry about others finding out about your shortcomings, or you struggle to find contentment in your everyday life… we invite you to join our study.
For the online portion, we will meet here each Monday and also interact in a closed Facebook group. Should you like to join in our journey, be sure to order the book ($10 on Amazon) and leave a comment below so I can be sure to include you as our start date grows closer.
Oh, and even if your time/schedule doesn’t permit you to actually DO the study with us– feel free to leave comments and participate here anyways. We are all in this together!
After all, we all learn in a variety of ways from a variety of sources– even from a broken jar of salsa.
Using my mess for His Message,
SGK
“For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.” ~2 Corinthians 4:6 NLT
