2 So the LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
He said, “A rod.” Exodus 4:2 (NKJV)
By Bro. John L. Cash
Susan and I are big fans of Julia Child, famously known as “The French Chef.” We both started watching her when we were still children. This was probably in part because we were born into a time when people had antenna-televisions that only picked up 3 or 4 channels. But now that we’re older, our affection for Ms. Child is purer. We love her for her technical skill, her great humor, and for the fact that she could cook anything on the planet. If you visit our home, you’ll often find us watching reruns of her program from our local PBS affiliate.
Last summer Susan and I visited some of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, DC. As you can imagine, we saw a great number of wonderful exhibits. But the one I remember most vividly was in the National Museum of American History. It’s an exhibit of the kitchen from Julia Child’s home.
The premise of the display was simple. The museum took the actual kitchen (along with all of it’s furnishings) and set it up just as it was in Ms. Child’s home. Susan and I spent a great deal of time peering at all the things set up there. And afterwards, we agreed that what we saw was different than what we expected.
We both imagined that her kitchen would be sparkling, state-of-the-art, and new. Because she was one of the greatest chefs in the world, we thought she would have the best equipment. But, instead, it was just a regular kitchen, like your mom’s kitchen, or your grandmother’s place. The bottoms of the pans had scorch-marks. Her “Mr. Coffee” had faded white plastic with coffee stains on it. Her collection of cookbooks had dog-ears and loose pages. And among her hodgepodge set of aluminum and copper measuring cups, there was one plastic scoop with a broken handle. I’ve seen the same sort of thing in our kitchen “junk drawer.”
I guess what we were expecting was that the greatest cook in the world would have the greatest equipment in the world. But Julia Child just had plain, normal stuff. In a nutshell, she had regular equipment she used on a regular basis.
I think that there’s an important lesson here. It’s not the type of equipment you have that matters. What matters most is how you put your equipment to work.
According to the Scriptures, God often instructs people to do His will with the things they already have in their hands. God allowed Moses to deliver the people of Israel using the rod he was already walking with. David faced down a giant after picking up 5 smooth stones from his own neighborhood. The Lord Jesus fed 5,000 people after borrowing the lunchbox of the little boy who was standing in front of Him.
I guess we don’t always need new things to be able to serve our God. More often, we just need to be handy with the things we already have.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 33 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. He’s a retired Mississippi public schoolteacher with grown sons, and is now a stay-at-home-grandpa with his grandson, Landon Cash. He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in a brick house in town (where spring showers washed away some of the pollen this week.) You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.