the transformation

Oh how much I would love to hug whoever came up with THE FOOD NETWORK concept! I think my husband and children would share that sentiment with me. Over the past 25 years of marriage I have cooked. Good, home cooked meals. But with very little variety in the dinner menu. Food Network changed all that! Do you watch any of the shows? My daughter Ashley and I were watching Rachael Ray in her 30 Minute Meals show last evening. We both commented on how much we admire how she conducts her show, which is really a lesson. She starts out by grabbing our attention and then grabs all the ingredients. Even the gathering of her ingredients from the fridge and shelf looks like fun, piling things all into her "garbage bowl" to carry it over to the counter. She then sets out with such intensity in heating the pan, dropping in some "EVOO", and dicing up the onions, garlic, or other vegetable. She grasps her knife with great zeal and begins to cut up a chicken breast, all the while telling us alternative ingredients we can use. It is this intensity and zeal that is so contagious. And always true to her shows name, a delicious meal is all plated and ready to eat in "just 30 minutes".
I think it is her attentiveness to her audience and their busy life that makes this show so successful. For although the purpose of the show may be to demonstrate how to change simple staples into a wonderful meal, the real beauty is that she has changed simple viewers into cooks. All this because she tells us we can and then shows us how. Replacing thoughts like "there is nothing to cook" with "there is something here I can put together". Substituting feelings of inadequacy at the stove top with knowledge of how to whip up a great dish in no time. That is empowerment! You just gotta love a gal like that.

What Rachael has managed to do for lowly kitchen slaves like me, our God has been doing since time began for all men. Transforming the lives of lowly sinners into people who live and serve and become ever more like HIM.
Philippians 3:21"who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."
Who replaces thoughts of "I'll never be good enough" with the truth that HE alone is good enough!
Romans 8:1-3"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering"
Who substitutes the wages of my filth and sin with the willing sacrifice of His precious atoning blood. Blood spilled for me. For us.
1 Peter 1: 18-19:"For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."
You just gotta love a God like that!
Praise HIM!