Just like cooking in a clean kitchen

Kitchens don't have to be big (although at the rate I mass produce food, it helps), but they have to be clean.   And, given the amount of time I spend in the kitchen, a clean kitchen comes as a clean analogy to a pure heart.  This analogy sprang forth in Bible study last week when the following question was posed by our fearless group leader:    What helps us to practice loving one another with pure hearts? 

Since my mind is usually on food of some sort, I spontaneously replied to the question with:  "It's like cooking in a clean kitchen." 

A clean kitchen can get dirty in many ways.  Having accomplished most of those ways in one form or another over my days of cooking, baking, and experimenting, I feel qualified to comment:

Chicken -- every time, I slap a piece of raw chicken on the cutting board, I immediately visualize all of the bacteria getting ready to grow, thrive, multiple and invade whatever dish awaits nearby.  Keeping the kitchen clean means keeping the bacteria at bay, taking care not to spread remnants of raw chicken over spaces, places, and sponges that are breeding grounds for more bacteria.   The wrong bacteria in the stomach and intestinal tract creates havoc almost immediately, as anyone who has had food poisoning well knows.   Keeping the heart free from the emotional equivalent and consequences of bacteria means being committed to counting to ten (well... sometimes a hundred and in some situations, a thousand) before opening my mouth after someone says something.  It means waiting out the swell of emotion that erupts immediately after a hurtful word, an offensive phrase, a careless action, or an inevitable frustration of daily life.   Preventing the bacteria from running rampant means slowing down to let the heart do its housecleaning before opening my mouth.  But to my dismay, I do a far better job of slowing down to corral the bacteria in the kitchen than keeping my many spontaneous thoughts from popping out of my mouth and causing immediate harm.

Sneezy the Cook -- with my allergies, this should be my nickname.  Despite my efforts to turn away, cover my mouth and nose, and otherwise control any potentially virus-containing droplets from hitting the air running, I still envision them doing their nefarious deed and landing on food... destined to be ingested, incubated, and turned into some dastardly illness days later (yes, I realize allergies aren't contagious, but considering almost everyone in my household has them, I have to wonder about that).   The less literal, more metaphorical virus that often interferes with a pure heart is a word or action that on its first imprint, feels like nothing at all.  Then a few days later, my heart officially takes offense and before I know it, I'm snapping at someone who had nothing to do with the original words or action that hurt me in the first place (hint: the spouse makes an awesome target for the emotional virus).   It's my fault here. I don't take the time to sort through all the emotions and negative feelings that accumulate in daily life, figure out where they came from and why I'm holding on to them, and take the appropriate medicine (whether talking it out, confronting the person who hurt me, or something else) to prevent the virus from taking hold in my heart and causing an influenza of symptoms directed at those around me.  

Toxics -- these are the sneaky little guys (ok... molecules) that lurk in the kitchen with big fancy names like phthalates perchlorethylene, triclosan and quarternary ammonium compounds that are largely invisible, easy to ignore, and only cause problems years later when they result in such minor diseases like cancer and its other horribly painful and chronic cousins.   Toxics are amazingly easy to ignore in the kitchen -- after all, if the kitchen looks clean and there are no bits of snot or chicken guts in plain view, then it must be clean!   But, those little toxic pieces add up over time, and in spiritual speak that means a heart calcified with walls of bitterness that gradually becomes unable to love because it has so long been exposed to little doses of toxicity here and there and everywhere.   And, the funny thing about toxics in the kitchen is that the very cleaning products we use to clean the kitchen can be full of those little multisyllabic poisons.  That's not unlike trying to clean the heart with the wrong products and tools -- a little bit of alcohol, a drop of denial, a dose of mindspeak absent of Godspeak... all can lead to a chronically compromised heart.   

The good news is that while God is not going to drop into my kitchen and clean it every night (sigh -- wouldn't that be the cat's meow?), He is awfully gracious when I ask Him to clean and purify my heart.  The essential, 100% natural, non-toxic cleaner is (drum roll please)... prayer, meditation, petition, and sometimes a little bit of contention for good measure.   

But rather unfortunately, I excel more at keeping a clean kitchen than paying attention to the daily care involved in cleaning out the heart.  So, while good and healthy food (ok.. sometimes not quite so healthy but nevertheless tasty) can stream out of my kitchen in high volumes, loving others out of a pure heart doesn't come so easily.   

Amen.  

Now, back to cooking.   

And, cleaning my kitchen.