Nourishing hearts as faithfully as we nourish our tables.
Welcome to Season & Savor Sunday — because feeding our bodies is not enough.
I was sitting in church a few weeks ago, when our worship leader said something at the close of the service that made me elbow my husband. No, not in the pay attention, this is for you, more in the “did you just hear what he said, that is so good” sort of way.
Our pastor had been preaching from 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16, a passage about receiving God’s word not as the word of man but as it truly is — the word of God, living and active in those who believe. And then our worship leader, as the best ones do, connected it to something so simple it almost caught you off guard.
He said he’d been convicted lately about being BPA free.
Now if you’re anything like me, your brain went straight to water bottles and plastic containers and the little symbol on the bottom of your reusable tumbler. But that wasn’t what he meant.
His BPA free was this: free of Bitterness. Pride. Anxiety.
My husband and I looked at each other at the exact same moment. The friend sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “I’m stealing that.” I whispered back, “Get in line.”
But here’s what I keep coming back to. It’s not just a clever thing to say. If you flip it over and look at what BPA free actually is, rather than what it’s free from, you get something even better: sweetness. humility. peace. That’s what I want to be full of.
The B: Bitterness
If I’m being honest — and that’s kind of the whole point of this space — bitterness is the one I tend to wave away. Oh, I don’t struggle with bitterness.
Except.
The moment someone cuts me off on the highway, and I’m still replaying it twenty minutes later? That little edge I carry when I feel overlooked or unappreciated and don’t say anything, but I don’t forget it either? Yeah. That’s bitterness doing what it does: taking up quiet residence and pretending it isn’t there.
Hebrews 12:15 (NIV) doesn’t mince words: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
A root. Not a visible, dramatic thing. A root. Growing underground, unseen, until one day it breaks through the surface and you wonder how it got so big.
Ephesians 4:31-32 (NIV) gives us the antidote: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Forgiving each other. As God forgave us. That’s the whole ballgame right there.
The P: Pride
This is my one. I’ll own it.
I have a sticky note that I look at pretty much every day. It says: Remember, TFC does not belong to you. It is all the Lord’s.
I put it there on purpose, because I need it. The Fresh Cooky started as an outpouring of my love for food and my love for God, and I meant that. I still mean it. But something funny happens when things start to go well. Traffic picks up. Recipes go viral. Emails come in from readers all over the country. And somewhere in there, if I’m not careful, the voice shifts from thank you, Lord to look what I did.
It sneaks. That’s the thing about pride. It doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly takes the credit.
1 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV) asks the question I need to hear most: “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
Every skill I have. Every reader who shows up. Every recipe that turns out right on the first try. Every door that opened. Received. All of it.
And it’s not just TFC. Pride shows up in my marriage, too. I am, on occasion — my husband is not allowed to read this paragraph 😉 — convinced I am right. About something. Whatever it is. And I’ve built my case, and I know I’m right, and so help me, I will not let it go. And then later I find out I wasn’t right. Or worse: I was right, and I still laid waste to the afternoon over something that didn’t matter one bit.
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Proverbs 16:18 (NIV)
Every. Single. Time.
The opposite of pride isn’t self-deprecation. It’s not pretending you don’t have gifts or dismissing a compliment with a oh, it was nothing. The opposite of pride is humility — and real humility is knowing exactly where your gifts came from and holding them loosely, with open hands.
Micah 6:8 (NIV) says it plainly: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Walk humbly. Not crawl. Not crumble. Walk. With Him. That’s the picture.
The A: Anxiety
Okay, full disclosure. I present pretty well.
Cool cucumber. Steady. Oh, I’m not much of a worrier.
And then my husband isn’t home when I think he should be, and I have checked the Find My app on my phone about 4 times in the last 8 minutes. Is he moving? Why did he stop? Why is it not updating? Is it a bad signal or is it something else? Obviously it’s something else.
I’m kidding. Sort of.
And my boys — my not-actually-children-anymore boys — I love them to the moon. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped worrying about them. School. Jobs. Life choices. The things I can see and the things I can’t. They don’t need a mom hovering, and I know that. But knowing it and feeling it are two very different things at 2am.
I’m not talking about clinical anxiety; I have family and friends with that, it’s horrible and debilitating, and nothing to mess around with. But for me, it’s more like low-grade worry that hums along underneath everything, tightening things up without me even realizing it.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV) emphasis mine
Not try harder to stop worrying. Not get it together. Pray. With thanksgiving. And then let a peace that doesn’t even make sense stand guard over the places where worry wants to move in.
1 Peter 5:7 (NLT) is even simpler: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”
He cares about you. Not just your big problems. The Find My refresh. The 2am thoughts about your kids. He cares about all of it. And He doesn’t need you to manage it first before bringing it to Him.
BPA Free
So here’s where I land, and honestly I’m still sitting with this even a few weeks later.
The word of God, as Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, is living and active in those who believe. Not a nice collection of old sayings. Not inspirational content. Living. Working in us. Changing us. Slowly, sometimes frustratingly slowly, but really.
And what it’s working toward, at least in my own messy little life, is this:
Free of bitterness. Free of pride. Free of anxiety.
Full of sweetness. Full of humility. Full of peace.
I’m not there. Not even close, most days. But I know what I’m aiming at, and I have a God who is patient enough to keep working on me even when I forget to look at my sticky note.
Maybe you need your own sticky note this week. Maybe you need to check which of the three has taken root in you without you noticing.
I know which one is mine.
“And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body, you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful” Colossians 3:15 (NIV)
Be thankful. That’s probably where it starts, for all three.
~ With grace at the table, and beyond
I read and respond to every email and comment, and I’m so thankful for each of you who comes back week after week. It means more than you know when you make my recipes and share your thoughts 💚
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