Daily Devotional for Small Group Discussion: Recipe

Discussion Questions 

1. Do you consider yourself a directions-following person or a make-it-up-as-you-go person?  

2. When have you followed rules or directions diligently, only to discover they didn’t produce the desired outcome? How did you adapt in that situation? 

3. An earlier verse in 2 Corinthians 3 says, “Our competence is from God.” How do God’s gifts and graces enable you to adapt and discern the best course of action? 

…for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. – 2 Corinthians 3:6b (NRSV) 

“Huh,” I thought to myself, surveying the mountains of diced veg on my counter and realizing I’d been chopping for almost two hours. I was carefully following a handwritten recipe for gazpacho that my husband had brought with him to our relationship decades ago. I do not cook with my heart; I cook with recipes. Therefore, I had dutifully procured all the ingredients on the list: four red peppers, four green peppers, four cucumbers, eight tomatoes, six jalapeños, an entire bunch of celery, an entire bunch of cilantro… 

Only now, my mis en place taking up every inch of counter space, did it occur to me that something was amiss. I called my husband in and, between the laughing and the pointing, he explained he’d gotten that recipe from a long-ago college summer job—working for a caterer.  

“Why would you put a catering recipe in a notebook with regular-sized ones?!” I asked in a completely normal inside voice, without yelling at all. Or swearing. 

“Um, I guess I thought the eight 64-oz bottles of tomato juice on the list would give it away,” he said through tears of laughter. Nobody needs that kind of toxic energy in their kitchen, so I kicked him out. 

Too far along to back out, I dug the second stock pot out of the basement and manfully finished what I had started. The soup was delicious. All 24 quarts of it, which is a perfectly reasonable amount of soup. 

It must be; the recipe said so.

Prayer
Keep me aware of both letters and spirits, oh God. And let me toss in a reasonableness test once in a while, too. Amen.

About the Author
Quinn G. Caldwell is Chaplain of the Protestant Cooperative Ministry at Cornell University. His most recent book is a series of daily reflections for Advent and Christmas called All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas. Learn more about it and find him on Facebook at Quinn G. Caldwell.