It was the 4th of July, and we were making baked beans for a party we would be attending later. The beans had been cooking slowly for 2 days in the crock pot, and the comment was made, “It’s always so odd when you start out, you think the beans and water and other ingredients will never amount to anything different because it takes so long for them to blend together and become fully cooked.” Yet they do. And it does take time, reminding me about us.
Like those beans, we’re all in the crock pot of life. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. We feel as though we are just simmering along. And yet, as we look back through the years—we can see how the flavor and character of our nature has developed. Each ingredient of life has added and contributed to our fullness. We’ve sometimes had the heat turned too high and may have gotten burned, but at just the right time those ingredients that no longer contribute to what we are becoming are removed and something else is added to bring us to another stage of flavor and readiness.
Age is a helpful tool when used properly, for we can go back and reconstruct the recipe that brought us to who and what we have become. Then, through the vantage point of years and experience, we can co-create ourselves with the benefit of knowledge based on what has gone before. We know what was too hot, and what was a waste of energy. We recognize those ingredients that contribute to our wellbeing, and those that do not.
Yes...life is like the crock pot. And when we allow ourselves to be worked by a master chef, we are all assured that at the end when the cooking is done, we will be a unique and flavorful masterpiece—the result of all that we have gone through to ripen into what we were designed to become.
From Seasons of the Soul 2005
