By Brad Campbell –

Just a thought to help start your week.

Recently I sat down with a large three-ring binder my mother had shelved in her kitchen along with many cookbooks.  In this particular binder and another similar one, she had placed recipe after recipe, each one hand-written by her own mother, my grandmother, who passed away more than a quarter century ago.

Some of those recipes, such as the ones for Coca-Cola cake or bachelor button cookies were recipes that I specifically remember my grandmother making many times for us fourteen grandchildren and all our parents.  And then there were some she had written down from magazine articles or things she heard mentioned on a television commercial while watching her “stories.”  One recipe I ran across was this little one you see here.  I don’t remember eating this pie at her house, and I don’t even remember her making it.

Here, on this little scrap of paper, she wrote, “pie.  cream cheese, sweet chocolate, cool whip.  Mix and chill in pie shell.”  That has to be one of the simplest recipes I’ve ever seen.  Yet, it sounds like a delicious chocolate pie, very easy to make with simple ingredients, and potentially leading to a delicious dessert.

It’s the simple things in life that mean the most sometimes.  We make too many things out to be so difficult.  We look ahead and plan, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But we go ballistic when our plans are thwarted and things don’t go as we hoped.  Have you ever stopped to think that maybe we expected the difficult to happen?  “Life can’t be this easy, so I must have missed the hard parts.”

Mix and chill.  The measurements aren’t even important in that little recipe.  Take what you have.  Put it together.  And then trust that it will turn out deliciously!  Our pantries and cupboards are not all the same.  We each have different talents and abilities.  We look at what life throws our way and think we don’t have the means to make it.  But if we would just trust the Recipe Writer Himself, take what we have been given, use it to our very best, and trust Him to make something delicious from it, then oh what a treat we would have in return.

I believe I’ll stir up one of these pies.  No doubt, it will be good, because I’ve known the one who wrote it and made so many other delicious things I’ve enjoyed.  I believe I’ll also trust the Lord this week as He uses all I have to somehow make something worth sharing.  How about you?

Just a thought.