The missing ingredient

The other day my wife was away in the afternoon so I thoughtI would make spaghetti and meatballs.  Ihad never made meatballs before, but I thought: how hard could it be?  There was this nice little recipe right onthe side of the spaghetti noodle box that seemed to be written with me inmind. 

The problem was I didn’t have all of the ingredients.  It said I needed bread crumbs, for instance,but we didn’t have any.  After scanningthe house I decided that Lipton onion soup mix would certainly do the trick.  It said to add some freshly chopped parsley.  I found some interestingingredients from our spice rack that I figured would do for an amplesubstitute.  (I wonder what this nutmegwill taste like?)  The recipe called foreggs, so I added water. 

As I mashed the ingredients together with the ground beef, Iwas immediately realizing that it wasn’t going to work.  I ended up cooking it all together andcalling it a “meat sauce.”  When my kidstried to eat it they were polite, but ultimately unimpressed.  My oldest took a few bites before sayingkindly, “I really had a big lunch today. I’m just not very hungry.”  Theplates started to scrape their way into the garbage can.  My feelings were not hurt; I thought it was funny.

It occurred to me later that each of us is trying to followa “recipe” in life.  The problem is wedon’t have all of the right ingredients to make it work.  We try all kinds of substitutes and mash themall together hoping that our life’s concoction will be palatable.  But it isn’t. We try sex or relationships or money or success or power to fill thevoid.  But Jesus comes along and declareshimself to be the missing ingredient.  Hesays that he completes the recipe that we cannot complete on our own.  And boy does he ever produce a wonderfulfeast. 

Hey, pass me another one of those meatballs.