By Katie Ginn
Ready for our “retro” Christmas party, absolutely not ready to make green bean casserole
Last Sunday (as I write), I made us late for Stephen’s company Christmas party because I underestimated how long I would need to make green bean casserole. Then at the party, we discovered that the green beans were still partially raw. I’d used fresh ones and failed to boil them long enough. To add insult to injury, the dress code for this party was “retro,” so I looked a little like a mid-century housewife despite my culinary incompetence.
On Monday, I forgot to add the sausage to the Crock Pot for our dinner of red beans and rice. I didn’t remember until Stephen got home. We put the sausage in the slow cooker, set a timer for two hours, and put a pizza in the oven. (We didn’t want to wait two hours to eat.)
On Wednesday, we threw away two pounds of ground beef that, because I’d failed to freeze it, had gone sour in the fridge.
On Saturday, while making chili with fresh ground beef, I opened a jar of salsa (in mid-air, with another item in my hand) and watched it sling out everywhere – floor, walls, cabinets. I whimpered. Stephen helped clean up. Fortunately, I had purchased too much salsa due to forgetting we already had some, plus Stephen’s uncle had left us some salsa on Thanksgiving.
This morning (Monday, December 16th), Teresa told me her paycheck did not go through on Friday. I logged into Quickbooks and saw that I had selected “paper check” instead of “direct deposit.”
I made plans to meet Teresa with a paper check in the afternoon. Then I wept as I dumped a couple of sliced-up bananas into the blender. (At least I hadn’t managed to mess up my breakfast smoothie in a while.) All these mistakes had been avoidable. And they might’ve been small, but they were affecting our everyday lives – even my employee’s life!
“God, what are You trying to teach me through all these screw-ups? You’ve got to tell me,” I begged.
The first thing that entered my mind was: You can do nothing without Me. It was Jesus’ words to His disciples: “Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NLT).
I immediately agreed. It was all too obvious I could do nothing apart from Jesus. I couldn’t even fix a meal or run payroll. For that matter, I never would’ve met my financial goal for MCL this year without God …
That’s when it hit me: In planning how to use MCL’s profits – i.e., the “fruit” I’d produced that had ultimately come from God – Stephen and I had not considered a tithe. We were about to take a chunk and use it for our own purposes, with nary a thought of giving any back to the One who’d caused the fruit to grow.
After Stephen got home tonight, I brought up the tithe idea, and we agreed to do it. We’ve asked God before to show us how to use our resources, and He’s answering. We need to honor the One without whom we can do nothing.
To be clear, I don’t think my culinary mistakes were God’s way of punishing me for financial ones. I flung that salsa all by myself. I don’t think tithing is a magical hedge of protection against me making any future mistakes. And I certainly know tithing won’t pay for my mistakes or sins; Jesus already did that.
But as I stood crying in front of the blender this morning, God used my mundane mistakes to get my attention and direct it to a bigger blunder that Stephen and I were about to make. A crucial ingredient was missing from our financial plans, so we’re adjusting our recipe to the Lord’s.
Fortunately, that’s a recipe even I can follow.
In this edition
Our 2025 Health & Fitness Issue is full of health advice and tips, the story of a nurse-turned-preacher, the scoop on a local ministry that’s caring for cancer patients, and more. Plus, don’t miss our cover story on Dr. Christy Haygood and her husband, Jameson. They are a striking picture of what a healthy marriage can look like in 2025!