If you ever want to have your basic assumptions about what is good and normal in life shaken or stirred, go to a grocery store in another country.
I remember scouring a Tennessee Walmart with Marcelo from Paraguay for something he called "pan rallado"; it took us nearly an hour to find something similar (breading) between dill pickles and squeeze grape jelly. Last night at a supermercado in Buenos Aires, where pan rallado is plentiful, I went searching for brown sugar to make chocolate chip cookies. "Oh, you mean black sugar!" I was told, and before I could think that it sounded somewhat racist coming from the blondest country in Latin America, I saw that said "black sugar" was actually, well, black. Or, if not entirely black, at least 90% cacao chocolate- maybe my eyes were playing tricks on my tongue, because it tasted slightly chocolatey, too. Neither the Tennessean pan rallado or the Buenos Aires black sugar were exactly what I was looking for, but it worked.
Then again, sometimes the things you think ought to be part of an inventory simply aren't there. In the corner store with aisles (yes, plural) devoted to dulce de leche, the holy duo of peanut butter and nutella is entirely absent. The most normal and good things are nowhere to be found.
Sometimes I'd like to imagine my soul/heart as a supermercado (yeah, this analogy is going to break down quickly, but enjoy it with me while it lasts). It would be well stocked with the peanut butter of academic persistence, the salad fixings of pedagogy, the herbal tea of introversion. It'd be a small operation, more like a farmer's market, and I'd be the sole employee and proprietor.
The come the customers, each with their assumptions of what my soul's supermercado should offer: the dulce de leche of flexible schedules, the yerba mate of patient listening, the bread of responsibility. Some items they might find, others not. That's okay. Out of the supermercado of the soul, the mouth speaks.*
And what if God were to show up at my supermercado? (Another bad analogy, but bear with me). What would he expect to find in my inventory, on my shelves. Would he find the fruits of love, joy, peace...?
Nope.
I've learned that my supermercado of the soul doesn't have much to offer. The fresh fruits and produce section is particularly pitiful- maybe a vintage grape of wrath lingering somewhere in an dusty box or a maraschino cherry leering from a glass jar. Sometimes the things you think are most normal are nowhere to be found.
God knows this- that's kind of the point. That is why He re-stores.*
He restores the supermercado of the soul, restocks the shelves with a vast array of in-season fruit, sometimes imported from other stores. As a wise professor once phrased it, 'the fruit of the Spirit is not for us to get fat off of. It is for us to feed to a starving world." Fruit. Yeast. Spices. Salt.
Thank God that He restores the confusing supermercado of my soul.
*Props to William Tyndale (Bible translator, martyr and general genius) for giving us that "restore" pun in Psalm 23- it doesn't work in Hebrew, Greek or Spanish!
I remember scouring a Tennessee Walmart with Marcelo from Paraguay for something he called "pan rallado"; it took us nearly an hour to find something similar (breading) between dill pickles and squeeze grape jelly. Last night at a supermercado in Buenos Aires, where pan rallado is plentiful, I went searching for brown sugar to make chocolate chip cookies. "Oh, you mean black sugar!" I was told, and before I could think that it sounded somewhat racist coming from the blondest country in Latin America, I saw that said "black sugar" was actually, well, black. Or, if not entirely black, at least 90% cacao chocolate- maybe my eyes were playing tricks on my tongue, because it tasted slightly chocolatey, too. Neither the Tennessean pan rallado or the Buenos Aires black sugar were exactly what I was looking for, but it worked.
Then again, sometimes the things you think ought to be part of an inventory simply aren't there. In the corner store with aisles (yes, plural) devoted to dulce de leche, the holy duo of peanut butter and nutella is entirely absent. The most normal and good things are nowhere to be found.
Sometimes I'd like to imagine my soul/heart as a supermercado (yeah, this analogy is going to break down quickly, but enjoy it with me while it lasts). It would be well stocked with the peanut butter of academic persistence, the salad fixings of pedagogy, the herbal tea of introversion. It'd be a small operation, more like a farmer's market, and I'd be the sole employee and proprietor.
The come the customers, each with their assumptions of what my soul's supermercado should offer: the dulce de leche of flexible schedules, the yerba mate of patient listening, the bread of responsibility. Some items they might find, others not. That's okay. Out of the supermercado of the soul, the mouth speaks.*
And what if God were to show up at my supermercado? (Another bad analogy, but bear with me). What would he expect to find in my inventory, on my shelves. Would he find the fruits of love, joy, peace...?
Nope.
I've learned that my supermercado of the soul doesn't have much to offer. The fresh fruits and produce section is particularly pitiful- maybe a vintage grape of wrath lingering somewhere in an dusty box or a maraschino cherry leering from a glass jar. Sometimes the things you think are most normal are nowhere to be found.
God knows this- that's kind of the point. That is why He re-stores.*
He restores the supermercado of the soul, restocks the shelves with a vast array of in-season fruit, sometimes imported from other stores. As a wise professor once phrased it, 'the fruit of the Spirit is not for us to get fat off of. It is for us to feed to a starving world." Fruit. Yeast. Spices. Salt.
Thank God that He restores the confusing supermercado of my soul.
*"A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of"
-Luke 6:45*Props to William Tyndale (Bible translator, martyr and general genius) for giving us that "restore" pun in Psalm 23- it doesn't work in Hebrew, Greek or Spanish!
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