Devotion 291 - biscuits

I was 9-months pregnant. 

Smarter women would not have traveled the 6 hours, but I was determined and you just don’t mess with a determined, pregnant woman.

It was the weekend of our family reunion.  We spent the same weekend every summer at the fairgrounds, under the pavilion hugging, laughing and eating.  Even if I had to deliver my baby under that pavilion, I was going to be at that reunion.

I remember savoring every moment, the biscuits and gravy at breakfast, the loose meat sandwiches for dinner and every single moment in between.  The brothers were together, my dad and his two elder brothers; the two younger sisters, all their children and their children’s’ children. 

We had stood at the graveside the night before.  My dad’s eldest brother, the patriarch paid homage to parents that had committed their family to the Lord and reaped the results of children and grandchildren that loved Him too.

I was determined that next year I would be there with my first baby, eating biscuits and seeing him or her meet the heroes of my life.  My dad, his siblings, my cousins; the people I held so very dear.

But next year never came.

My dad’s eldest brother was taken home that Fall.

None of us could muster organizing another reunion and I wondered if my son would ever taste the biscuits and the laughter and the love.

Fast forward some sixteen years later and I received a note from my cousin.  We were going to do it again.  The brothers are gone, but my dad remained.  The sisters, the cousins and yes, there would be biscuits, lots of biscuits.

I penciled in the date knowing nothing would keep me from it.

We arrived, my husband and my four children and I sat on the sun porch feeling the breeze and drinking in the nectar of family, love and legacy. 

I wanted to take it home in a bottle. I put a biscuit on my plate and filled it 

with a jam my aunt had 

purchased special for the day. 

For all the world, nothing has ever tasted so good.  I savored the sweetness in the jam as much as I savored my aunts spoiling my children. 

We had been to the cemetery the night before.  My dad stood in for his mentor, his eldest brother, and made the same speech we had heard over a decade ago.  He thanked them for a life well lived and prayers well prayed and biscuits well baked.

You see, I don’t make biscuits.  When you have tasted heaven, you can’t settle for anything less.  

So one afternoon this week, when the announcer on the radio said he was going to talk about biscuits, my mouth watered and my mind raced.  It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the very first day of preschool.  The line of cars seemed one hundred cars deep.  I settled in waiting for the biscuit story.  It was an amazing story, a military man, young and in charge of a dozen other men close to my eldest son’s age. They were alone in a country whose language they did not speak attempting to restore order where mayhem reigned around every corner nothing could be predicted or protected.

It had been a long, tiring day when the small American group walked through another town facing yet more uncertainty.  An older woman appeared out of her home speaking words that the commander could not understand, and then she handed him a warm, delicious biscuit.  Only one… and he, the young commander, savored it.  It nourished his body, but even more so his spirit and soul.  You see…his mom was a biscuit maker. 

He returned home some months later. This was well before cell phones and emails and he sat down with his mom to tell her the story.  It sparked something in her memory and she raced for her journal.  On that day, that warm biscuit day she had been baking and praying.  She wrote, “Show my son that I love him.”  The Creator of the universe heard that prayer and delivered a biscuit to a fearful son thousands of miles away.

As I sat in my car, listeners began to call in their biscuit stories;  their sweet stories of divine answers.

I approached the school.  I could now see the little preschoolers jumping and waving to their parents.  My little Ava was far away but I could point her out in her red polka dots.  She saw me.  My biscuit, my answered prayer.

I have been keeping a journal for months of things I am grateful for but I wondered now, what if I started everyday reflecting on biscuits?

I see the flour, our love and work, the sustenance of life, and I am grateful.  I see the sugar, the sweetness of children, of their laughter and joy, and I am grateful.  I see the salt, the spice of life in flowers and rain, and I am grateful.

But do I step back and savor…the biscuits of life?

I drove away from school.  Ava was quiet, exhaustion does that in my 4-year old and the biscuits came to mind.  I could think of dozens of answered prayers. 

My eyes glistened as I reflected.  Never do answered prayers come on my schedule and in that God has taught me to trust and persevere.  Rarely does answered prayer look anything like I asked.  In that He has taught me about His wild creativity and absolute sovereignty. 

And hardly ever has answered prayer felt like I thought it would feel.  It is not a cozy couch; no it’s an embrace that has the aroma of Holy.

CS Lewis said, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

I don’t want to miss the small or the large; I don’t want to miss the flavor of the biscuit.  What if I began tasting life with biscuits on my plate, seeing Him in the present, in light of His faithfulness from the past?

Oh Beloved how sweet life is with a biscuit on the tongue and the Spirit in the heart.

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see~
how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to him.   
Psalm 34:8