Slow Cooker or Pressure Cooker?
SLOW COOKER OR PRESSURE COOKER?
Memories of my mother’s kitchen take me back to a woman multitasking home and work long before it was fashionable. Although not up to par with our modern 21st-century amenities, she acquired several time-saving devices of her day in order to maintain this lifestyle. Among those, her pressure cooker was a firm favourite. Early mornings or late afternoons were characterized by this same silver dragon spewing a puff of steam into the farm kitchen with my mom deftly adjusting knobs on the beast in between stirring pots on the gas stove, listening to the radio, and sometimes prepping urgent work for the next day.
I hated the silver dragon, always unnerved as it vigorously exhaled a puff of steam into my quiet mornings or lazy afternoons – a piercing sound echoing through the thick walls of the old house, rudely shattering my childish reveries. At a very young age, I vowed that the beast would never enter my grown-up world! Naturally, I acquired a slow cooker when I raised my kids, embracing its slow, simmering, essentially constant temperature. The lid trapping the heat and moisture allows food to cook slowly over time, a process unnoticed and unintrusive.
During the last two years, I thought much about these two gadgets and their different approaches to preparing meals. It dawned on me that, in many ways, they are metaphors for various personalities and their unique approaches to problem-solving and conflict handling-. Inadvertently, I chose to go about things differently from my mother, finding an alternative way to deal with stress, challenging situations and people. After all, we are different human beings, carrying different loads and subjected to different times and circumstances. Like chalk and cheese, our approaches to life are naturally unique. Interestingly, I see my two daughters, whom I sometimes call Fire and Ice because of their hair colour, navigating this same route, trying to establish an authentic but godly-wise way to tackle all life throws at them.
Yet, for all of us, the standard and warning in God’s word remain the same, for the danger is not per say in the way we tackle things, but rather the attitudes of our hearts. We must understand that one approach will not exempt us from the temptation to sin. Therefore, when the Bible says the following, we must heed in all earnest!
- Love God with all your heart, mind and soul (Mark 12:30)
- Seek first the Kingdom of God and all other things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)
- Love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12: 31)
- Be angry and do not sin (Ephesians 4: 26 – 27)
- Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5: 43 – 48)
- Trust God and do not lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3: 5 – 6)
- Forgive as the Lord forgave you (Colossians 3:13)
While a thoughtful, rational process may be wiser, and a temperate and quiet spirit commended in the Bible, we still need to, above all, guard our hearts, ensuring it remains undivided and single-minded in its pursuit of holiness. And so dear friends, or should I rather say Slow ánd Pressure Cookers, as we approach only the second month of the year, let us remain aligned to God’s timeless precepts, attuned to His clear and unambiguous directives, apace with His eternal timeline for our lives and our world.
