The Recipes are Love

Our Ladies Group at Church recently published a fund-raiser cookbook and this is the Introduction:

A mother asks her children what dishes they want for the special occasion next week. The children’s answers are in this book. A young professional woman smiles as she prepares to make her grandmother’s special recipe, while her friend asks the secret method. Her answer is in this book. A warm-hearted lady asks her friends at book club, what should I bring to the potluck next week? The answer is in this cook book. A visitor to our yearly Church picnic asks the guys behind the grill what smells so enticing. Their answer is in this cookbook. Don’t we have something to look forward to as we open the pages of recipes that follow?

These recipes are a collection of love-made-real.

They are prayers turned into meals by servants of God, showing His compassion to those around them.

Since the recipes are love, it is only fitting that they come from all over the world, since our Lord loves people from each and every nation around the world. We believe this so strongly that after a long midnight Paschal service of joy, we return to St. Nicholas with tired but smiling faces the next day and demonstrate this world-wide love. On that day, as many people as are able to read the Gospel passage in a different language each stand at the front and proclaim the good news. First English, then Arabic, then Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Gaelic, French, Japanese, and so on. Do some of those languages remind you of those spoken by opposite sides during a military conflict? It’s true. Bitter hatred can cross international lines. So can Love.  As you peruse our cookbook, with recipes not only from the good old South and Louisiana but also from Sweden, Greece, Lebanon, Russia, and many more beautiful and diverse lands of God’s creation, we hope you can reflect on the Love of God that flows over every nation.

 It seems that God has always wanted His children to know His love through physical material, not just invisible prayers. He actually walked with Adam and Eve. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him specific instructions about how to set up a temple so the people could experience God through the sight of angel tapestries, the smell of incense and candles, the sound of chanting, and the taste of holy bread. Another expression of this physical, material Love is one we share with each other in a meal. There is not a great divide between smelling the incense and smelling the lovingly made cookies – Jesus made sure of that by ripping open the heavens and coming down to earth as a physical, material man. A man who grilled fish with his disciples. He didn’t ignore their physical needs; rather, He came to touch their spirits and their bodies and make all things beautiful. And we get to be co-workers with Him, when we make beautiful things in love.

May the recipes in this cookbook enable you to be a co-creator with God, sharing love with the people around you.

May they be a prayer list. We invite you to offer a prayer, “God bless your servant” for the person who offered in love a recipe you are about to use. May your cooking be a prayer for the ones you are feeding.  Finally, may you, through this co-creation with the God who created the universe, taste and see that He is GOOD!

“O, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8)