There
trudged along a Scottish highway years ago a little,
old-fashioned mother. By her side was her boy. The boy was
going out into the world. At last the mother stopped. She
could go no farther. “Robert,” she said, “promise me
something?” “What?” asked the boy. “Promise me
something?” said the mother again. The boy was as Scottish
as his mother, and he said: “You will have to tell me
before I will promise.” She said: “Robert, it is
something you can easily do. Promise your mother?” He
looked into her face and said: “Very well, mother, I will
do anything you wish.” She clasped her hands behind his
head and pulled his face down close to hers, and said:
“Robert, you are going out into a wicked world. Begin
every day with God. Close every day with God.” Then she
kissed him, and Robert Moffat says that that kiss made him a
missionary. And Joseph Parker says that when Robert Moffat
was added to the Kingdom of God, a whole continent was added
with him. There are critical times in the history of souls.
“Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.”
Before
you browse the article section take a few minutes and listen
to the words of three people that do not know Jesus... See
if it stirs your heart or gives you insight...
Food for thought...
We, as Christians,
belong to the Kingdom
of
Heaven. Our citizenship is not
earthly, but heavenly. Satan is the prince and power
of the air and the ruler of this world. One day,
Christ is going to come back and claim what He
purchased on the Cross…, namely, all of creation.
This world system is embedded with the spirit of
anti-Christ…. Why should anyone be suppressed that
all hell is breaking loose in the
Middle East
or
anywhere
for that matter. The world is going nuts…. Wars,
rumors of wars, pestilence, tsunamis, earthquakes,
AIDS, deadly disease, poverty, occult activity, etc…
it goes on and on… (Read Mat. 24,
Mark 13, Luke 21,
Rev – all, 1 Peter, 2
Tim., it all says the same.) The raise of the
Antichrist and the end of this age appears to be
close at hand. The good news is - Jesus WILL return
and restore ALL things unto himself. With all this
bad news in the world it can make one feel
paralyzed. The key to release from this feeling is
to pray.... Listening to God in the midst of trouble
will put you in a stance to participate with Jesus
as He walks amongst the chaos. With all this war I
am convinced that Holy Spirit revival is upon us...
a move of God that will be so great - it will
possibly usher in His return.
Remember Christianity is not
an army of militants, bombers, and fighters… but prayer
warriors… The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but
spiritual...
Ephesians
6:10 - 13 (NKJV)
10Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the
power of His might. 11Put on the whole
armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the
wiles of the devil. 12For we do not
wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts
of wickedness in the heavenly places.13Therefore
take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
stand.
We heal the sick… and
not cause sickness...
We raise the dead... and
not kill...
We feed the poor... and
not destroying food supplies...
We bring peace... and
not war...
We proclaim the Good
News of the Kingdom... and point people to the King
of Kings!
We are children of the King
of Kings – our Kingdom is not of this world… If someone
sees only politics, nations, borders, etc, they are not
seeing the world that Christ died for….
Go into all the world and
proclaim the Good News….
The
Kingdom
of
God
is at hand.
Food for thought on this
news filled day... FLR
Everyone
on the planet is designed to make a difference. No matter
our age or stage, married or single, living in the city,
the suburbs, or the country, with little education or a
PhD, with lots of money or little—each of us, as a
believer, is on this planet to make a mark.
As a Chef and department head, in the
business arena, finding inspiration to tap into that
professional passion to make a difference in the
marketplace, often came from business and leadership
writers such as Tom Peters. In
the eighties, while working for Marriott's Rancho Las
Palmas Resort in California, our desire was to achieve
that coveted 5 Star status. We were driven… and through
the leadership of our GM, Bob Small, we achieved that
goal. What was the spark to start that fire. Bob gave us
all a copy of Tom Peters book, In Search of Excellence. It
was perfect, for we were “In Search of
Excellence….” Through the years - things had changed and the energy of the
time brought us “Thriving on Chaos.” When the nineties hit
we became radical… we wanted transformation and the
call of the day was “Liberation Management” and “The
Pursuit of WOW!” This new freedom caused us to redefine
ourselves, as managers and leaders and “The Brand Called You” was the theme of
the day. Today, Tom Peters has given us a, not-so-new, but
totally reinvigorated look at the way we do business in
the 21st century. His book, “Re-imagine -
Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age,” is another
excellent addition to anyone business library. As his team
describes this new work it is:
“More than just a how-to book for
the 21st Century, “Re-imagine!” is a call to arms—a
passionate wake-up call for the business world, educators,
and society as a whole. Focusing on how the business
climate has changed, this inspirational book outlines how
the new world of business works, explores radical ways of
overcoming outdated, traditional company values, and
embraces an aggressive strategy that empowers talent and
brand-driven organizations where everyone has a voice.”
Now, I am a big Tom Peters fan. I
think I have read about everything he has written. “The
Pursuit of WOW!” is a mantra that I still pursue in my
work and life today. Yet, in reflecting on Tom’s new book,
“Re-Imagine!” my mind keeps coming back to the call
that Rick Warren ushered in his book “Purpose Driven
Life.” As I grow older, and I hope wiser, I have learned
that the separation between Christ and business is a fallacy,
a departure, form a greater impartation of what Christ
desires to do in and through your life.
You see at the end of the day, without knowing,
pursuing, and fulfilling that purpose, God’s purpose in
your life… all is futile, all is but chaff blowing in
the wind, never setting root, never achieving ones destiny
or place with-in the framework of God’s Divine purpose.
We become wells without water, waves of the sea tossed
about by a tempest. This is, as Tom’s title suggests,
the season to re-imagine, but not in the business sense of
the word, though it may impact business. We need to
re-imagine our destiny with Christ and
re-ignite a new vision for our future. We need to re-ask
the hard questions; Lord – what is my life’s purpose?
What is your ultimate plan for me, right here and now, on
earth, as you desire in heaven? Lord, what must I change
to re-align myself with your Divine Purpose? The promise
of the Lord to his people held captive to Babylon was
this:
Jeremiah 29:11-14a
(NKJV)
"11For
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the
LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a
future and a hope. 12Then you will call upon Me and go and pray
to Me, and I will listen to you. 13And you will seek Me and find Me,
when you search for Me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you, says the LORD...,"
That promise is just as real today as
then. it is so easy to get caught up in the Babylonian
system of this world and miss the mark as to our destiny. As the description to Tom’s book
states, the climate has changed, only this time the call
to arms is being issued by the Lord of Glory. He is
sending us a wake-up call. He is looking to infuse our
lives with radical vision and purpose. He desire that we
become all that we can be. If I were to blow a trumpet
today, If I were to sound an alarm upon the Holy mountain,
If I were to write a book right now, this second, it would
have to be “Divine Purpose! The call of the Hour… in
this final Hour.” You see the Lord of the Harvest is
searching, seeking, and desiring His children to lock-in
to His plan. It is a season of compression, confession,
and obsession over Him. The Lord is issuing a decree; He
is asking a very tough question, “Are you locked in to
My desire for your life?” I have come to believe, that
if we look hard enough, dig down deep enough, and bow down
long enough, we will see that heart cry that the Lord
whispered into our ears many years ago. You see deep
within the fabric of our being God has engraved an imprint
of our purpose. Woven into our very DNA is the fabric of
His will. Yet, like the hem of His garment, we have to
reach out and cry… “If I can only touch… the hem of
His garment… I will be healed.” Today is the call of
the soldiers of God. Today is the heart call to a people
of purpose. No longer is second best, ok. The
Kingdom
of
God
is not a car rental agency. Let us lay aside every yolk
and ambition that hinders us. It’s time to settle the
issue, once and for all, and fulfill the High Calling of
the Lord of All Glory and seek His Divine Purpose!
Fred Raynaud
The
House of Bread
“Behold,
the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a
famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst
for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they
shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to
the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of
the LORD, and shall not find it.”
King
James
Version,
Amos 5:11-12
“The
average church has so much machinery and so little oil of
the Holy Spirit that it squeaks like a threshing machine
when you start it up in the fall after it has been out in
the field all year.”
Billy
Sunday (1862–1935)
Oh the agony of it all,
trying to bring to the surface something that truly has
meaning, that truly has depth… this is my heart’s
desire. Several months ago, I started to write this
chapter. Last night I went back and read what I wrote
previously and I began to grown as my eyes scanned across
the pages. The problem was… it was all dribble…,
words, words, words, all splattered upon a white pixel
canvas of my screen. Where was the fire, where was the
passion? I thought to myself. Frustrated, I prayed for
guidance, and hit the sack for a decent night’s sleep.
When I woke, it hit me
like a bolt of lightning what I was really trying to say.
The problem with restaurants today is the same problem we
see in many of our churches in this modern world. Bear
with me a bit of rambling and I’ll take you to the heart
of the matter.
You know the French were
the first to coin the word “Restaurant.” In the Dictionnaire
de Trevoux, in 1771, defined the word restaurateur,
as “someone who
has the art of preparing true broths, known as
‘restaurants’, and the right to sell all kinds of
custards, dishes of rice, vermicelli and macaroni, egg
dishes, boiled capons, preserved and stewed fruit and
other delicious and healthy-giving foods.” It
wasn’t until 1786 that the word restaurant was used to
describe an eating-house.
Paris
was booming with social eateries. The simplicity of the
early eating-houses were nothing like the restaurants of
nineteenth century. They were the local hangouts –
places that served comfort food – honest, homemade, and
at a value that was friendly to the working class of the
day. What had started out as a simple house-of-bread, had
suddenly become more complex and compared to that first
little café in 1550
Constantinople
, unrecognizable. Wither you dined in a café, bistro,
brasserie, or an elegant restaurant; dining was the social
fashion of nineteenth century
Europe
.
Today, eating-houses are
big business – and we are inundated with them. They line
up like merchant-booths in an ancient marketplace, waiting
for the crowds to sample their wares – we have them upon
every street corner, and on every inch of space
in-between, cookie-cutter concepts that unfold, pop-up,
and spread out across the landscape like settler’s tents
across the prairie planes. No longer is the
sole-proprietor standing at the door to great you. No
longer do you walk into a neighborhood café and have
intimacy with the owner and your fellow patrons as well.
It’s all driven by the corporate Big-Buck and the bottom line.
The days of the
independent owner who had only one goal in mind, to fill
the place with well-nourished, extremely stuffed, and
happy consumers is over. It doesn’t matter what you call
it… a Café, Bistro, Brasserie, Tavern, Diner, Coffee
Shop, or Restaurant, if there’s one on every street
corner you can be guaranteed they the menu as well as the
experience is carved out of the boardroom and not from the
heart of a chef proprietor.
The days of the community
restaurant beating with the heart-felt passion of an
independent neighborhood owner is gone in most
communities. The independent owner saw their restaurant as
a place with a purpose…, that people would come in;
they’d eat, and be satisfied beyond their expectations.
Their experience is so fulfilling – so wonderful, that
they leave feeling full and content – they want to come
back again. Not only do they come back – they become a
marketing-champagne unto themselves. They tell their
friends, their neighbors, anyone who will listen… what a
grand experience they had in your restaurant.
The sad reality is that
many independent restaurants today struggle to survive and
are going up neck and neck with the big boys – they
loose their footing and are barley getting by, month after
month, trapped in a slow death that doesn’t seem to end.
They can’t compete with the glitz and the glitter of the
well-staged cookie-cutter concept of their corporate
counterpart. The corporate giants on the other hand have
it down pat.
They have the educated
experience, corporate marketing, project planning, a solid
infrastructure of controls and training, with a so-called
pulse on the consumer and the corporate cash to back up
their enterprise. They have done their homework, and they
know the demographics of the area – where to put their
hot branded concept. The problem with these corporate
institutional giants is not their expertise and business
acumen… the problem is passion.
Without passion, even
though you have all the ingredients of success, you will
soon become a whitewashed tomb of a restaurant. You will
be a colorful balloon – bright and shiny on the outside
– be inside – full of hot air serving up dribble to a
consumer that has lost their ability to taste real food.
They have bought into the picture on the billboard with
its thick and juicy representation a dish that in reality
is not even close to the picture. Thank heaven for glitz
and glitter… if you spin it right, strong theme, lots of
energy and glitzy decorative elements to distract them
from the product – maybe the folks won’t notice… and
the sad thing is – most don’t.
Yesterday my wife and I
were sitting around trying to decide what to eat for
dinner… when, like a moment of marital oneness; we
looked at each other and said, “Breakfast.” That was
it, nothing like steak and eggs with a side of hot
flapjacks to wind out the evening. We hopped on my
motorcycle and shoot over to a nearby chain coffee shop
that had recently opened. The building and design package
of the facility was nice. They had all the extra consumer
hooks one would anticipate these days, retail
merchandising at the entrance, walk-up to-go counter for
easy pick-up, counter seating with contemporary
table-lamps - positioned appropriately, and a warm
comfortable interior broken up with modest a ratio of
booths to tables. Decorative pony walls and partitions
infused with a few plants breaking up the space to create
the right environment without causing you to feel you were
eating in a banquet hall.
So far so good, I thought
to myself, as I reached for the menu to scan the
offerings. The menu was, from a corporate standpoint,
perfectly engineered. All the items were well placed,
descriptors were well written, layout was crisp, and for a
café, the offerings sounded appealing. My choice was
easy… steak and eggs to feed my craving, and flapjacks
– there’s nothing like a pancake supper with a good
steak and a side of eggs to fill that void.
Well, so much for fantasy,
my food arrived and it was awful… I mean BAD, and I
haven’t said that in a long time. Sitting on my plate
was the most puny, overcooked, soggy (figure that one
out), piece of what they referred to as a steak. Next to
that boil-in-the-bag piece of meat
was a small pile of little pail, un-seasoned, cubed
potatoes, called home fries, and two pail looking eggs…,
at least they were over easy. Now, as I get older, I have
grown to focus more on the company than the meal, but this
time I couldn’t. I felt like Howard Beale (played by
Peter Finch), the acclaimed news anchorman for UBS T.V. in
that 1976 movie “Network”, I wanted to stand up and
look at rest of the patrons in the restaurant and say,
look at your food – look at it will you and “…get
up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I
want you to get up right now and go to the window, open
it, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell,
and I'm not going to take this anymore!!” Ah but
alas, I contained myself. With a loss of appetite, I
returned my food, and sat there with a cup of warm coffee.
I continued a nice dialog with my wife while waiting
patently to depart.
You see this place with
all the components to make a modern day restaurant a
success, lacked one serious ingredient. They could not
deliver what they had promised – good food. It takes
passion to make good food. Someone in the kitchen has to
be on his or her knees before a hot stove and find out how
and what to cook. Passion is the key that that separates
real food from a cheap imitation. Passion is the door, the
driving force, which brings all the right elements
together. Passion will pull you to the consumer’s table
to check the pulse of their experience. Passion will drive
you into the kitchen causing you work endlessly on a dish,
over, and over again, until it is just right, its taste,
texture, aroma, the layers of flavor, its presentation,
all of it. You will tear it apart and build it back up
again – as many times as needed until it’s right.
Passion is contagious.
Passion is contagious with the staff and the patron.
People are drawn to your passion. People want to be around
people that believe…
people that are truly excited about what they do. They
want to brush up against you and get close to you. They
want to catch a glimpse of something… they want to glean
a new understanding, a new depth of what you’re doing.
They want an imparting of something. They want your mantel
– they want a double dose of the fire that is burning
inside of you. They want to draw from the wellspring of
your experience. They desire to taste of something grand.
They want their cups to overflow.
Now listen…. This is
very important. I am NOT talking about restaurants
and the consumer…. I am sharing with you the answer
to the greatest mystery of the 21st century. I
am talking about the Church. I am talking about the great commission. I am talking about
the Master Chef – Jesus Christ, and His desire to set a
table in the community where you live and serve up a meal
that is fit for Priests and Kings. I am talking about
Passion and the Pulpit. I am talking about the ingredients
needed to reach a dieing world. I am talking about the
difference between a lukewarm church or dead church and
one that is alive on the in side with the presence and
heartbeat of Jesus Christ.
The restaurant, in a real
way, is parallel to our church buildings today. We build
them virtually on every street corner. We offer up verbal
menus from the word of God for all to come and feast upon,
both sinner and saint. We desire to restore man back into
fellowship with their loving Father and introduce them to
the bread of life. Even the word “Restaurant” has its
root meaning “to restore; a food that restores,” and
aren’t we, as the body of Christ, been given the great
commission to restore mankind back into fellowship with
their creator, to feed them real bread, living bread, the
bread of life.
Often, we the church have
bought in to this corporate model. Instead of spending
time on our knees before the hot stove of God’s
presence, we are in search for the right hook, a good
program, a new way to increase the tithe and raise the
membership. Our real model is closer to Jesus in the
garden
of
Gethsemane
, than the hanging gardens of
Babylon
. We don’t need spin we need to be spent, like change in
the pocket of an Almighty God; we need to be sold out to
Him. We need to seek Him until we sweat, as it were, great
drops of blood. Only then will we have a message that is
birthed in travail. Only then will we communicate the
“Passion of Christ.”
We get caught up in our
various programs and events, how well we say the same old
message, while forgetting what the fundamental mission was
that brought us here to begin with. At times such as this,
we have to go back to our first love and receive from Him
the passion and simplicity that we knew when we first
believed – where the mission was fresh and simplistic
– the goals were souls and not much more.
That is not always a
simple task. People have a tendency to get comfortable no
matter where they are or in what state they are in. They
settle into complacency and loose the desire for a deep
love relationship. It becomes a forked-road marriage where
each partner is headed in opposite directions. Neither a
marriage nor the church will be able to survive in a state
as that. We, the bride of Christ, must be in submissive
obedience to His master plan. Our churches need more of
Him and less of us.
It’s just like that,
cookie-cutter, restaurant my wife and I were eating at, it
looked good, had all the spin but in the end – there was
nothing solid to eat. It had become a “house-of-stale-bread”
or a “house-of-bread” serving
no bread at all, just old dried crumbs ground into the
carpets from patrons long forgotten. When a restaurant
runs out of its ability to serve food – people stop
coming. The sad thing is that these people are hungry –
they are thirsty – they are looking for someone
somewhere to open their doors and invite them to come in
and feast at the table of abundance.
The church, tragically,
and often, has end up in the same condition. A
house-of-bread where the only mandate is to reminisce
about the bread of the past – speculating how good it
must have tasted. Yet, there are no ovens to bake what the
people want or need. It becomes a history lesson about
bread. People come in hungry for the bread of life. They
want to sink their teeth into savory hot loaves of freshly
baked bread. They hunger and desire manna from heaven but
all they get is a menu they can never order off of.
Oh, there’s talk about
how wonderful the bread once was – they even sing about
bread – but serve it fresh
and hot – no way. All of this brings about a spiritual famine in the
land. People go about their day hungry and thirsty for a
living vibrant relationship with the bread of life – but
are left unfilled and hopeless. The sad thing is that
Jesus is more, now than ever before, ready to send fresh
hot loves of His presence into their midst – if they
would only seek His face and give Him back His church.
So what happens to the
communities where we live, our neighborhoods, our cities?
What happens to our children? What happens to all the
starving people around us desiring to sink their teeth
into spiritual food that has substance and life giving
power? They go hungry and the famine becomes more
rigorous. Our churches become fast food outlets –
scattered about on every street corner – but nothing of
substance is really served there. What do people do when
their spiritual hunger becomes spiritual
malnutrition? They flock to anything or anyone that
offers something resembling a loaf of bread. They window-shop on the streets of our
cities and taste the offerings of the new age movement,
Eastern mysticism, or the occult, in search for hot bread.
They seek out astrologers and tarot card readers hoping to
find living water to quench their dying souls.
People are a lot smarter
than we think. If one ofour churches lit the ovens of the Holy Spirit and
started cooking hot loaves from heaven – word would
travel… it would get around… people would do anything
to get real bread – hot freshly baked bread –
especially in times of great famine.
Consider the story of
Ruth, found in the book of Ruth in the Old Testament.
“Now
it came to pass in the days when the
judges
ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain
man of
Bethlehem
Judah
went to sojourn in the country of
Moab
…
…Then
she arose with her daughters in law, that she might return
from the country of
Moab
: for she had heard in the country of
Moab
how that the LORD had visited his people in giving them
bread.”
The
King
James
Version,
Ruth 1:1
&6
Naomi and her family left
home and moved to
Moab
because there was a
famine in
Bethlehem.
Bethlehem
was the city of
David
;
Bethlehem
was the birthplace of the Messiah;
Bethlehem
was the birthplace of the bread of life.
Bethlehem
was the last place on earth you would think of as a place
of famine. Even the literal translation of
Bethlehem
in the Hebrew means “the
House of Bread.” It should not have been a place of
famine, but famine came, and Naomi left because they were
hungry. They left because the House of Bread had no bread at all.
Why do people leave or
never come into our churches – because there is no
bread. Bread is the substance for life. The Jews knew the
power of bread – they used its symbol during the
Passover (feast of unleavened bread,) the showbread was an integral part of the tabernacle and proof of the
presence of God in the temple. In the book of Numbers,
chapter four, it was called the
bread of the Presence. The showbread literally means
– show-up bread
– the evidence that God has shown
up in this place.
Naomi and her family are
symbolic of the people that never enter or leave many of
our churches today. They left
Bethlehem
and went to
Moab
trying to find bread. Oh what lengths people will go
through in search of some hot bread in times of famine. We
see it all around us – people flock to nightclubs,
casinos, and bars, in search for bread that will fill the
void in their souls. They become slaves to sin, drugs,
mental or physical abuse, and they except it – believing
it is their cup in life. Why do they believe this? The
answer is simple – we have let them down, we have failed
them and not offered them the reality of the living truth
and the power of a gospel that will change their lives
forever. We have become a franchise of the fast food
gospel.
The good news is we do not
have to except this state of spiritual
melancholy. Jesus is more than ready to rain upon us
manna from heaven. He wants His church back and is more
than ready to hang a sign outside the “House of Bread”
stating – Welcome… Under New Management! The
turnaround is simple – “If my people, which are called
by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear
from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal
their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14.) There is no other way.
God wants to bake loaves of hot bread and serve them up
with the olive oil of His presence.
The next time you drive
down the restaurant district of your neighborhood pay
attention to all the types of restaurants you find there.
Look at the ones that have a two-hour wait, in contrast to
the restaurants whose parking lots are empty. Count the
number of fast food outlets and cookie-cutter chains, and
see how many cars are lined up in the drive-thru. Look at
the churches in your neighborhood and use they same kind
of guidelines as you try to find the one with a two-hour
wait – to get in. They question is, why are they there?
Is it because the food is great or because they have
become numb and their taste buds have been diluted to
accept what’s ever put before them? Are they there
because, really, that’s the best we offer and nothing
better? I tell you, if a Great restaurant opened its doors
and served hot-out-of-the-oven bread, you would have to
fight them off with a stick.
I challenge you – if
people are willing to stand in line for two-hours to have
a burger – how long will they stand in front of a church
that is overflowing with the presence and power of the
Holy Spirit. The bread-of-life will draw them. The water
will keep them. No coupon or two-for-ones will bring them
in. No early bird specials will cause them to beat down
your doors. However, bread, life-giving bread, just out of
the oven bread, served hot and fresh for this generation
– will.
Humanity has a bread
shaped hole in its heart and the only thing that will fill
it is Jesus. Let’s get back to the culinary basics and
bring forth hot bread to the nations. I look forward to
the day when the lines outside our churches go on for
blocks. I can’t wait for the sweet aroma of the freshly
baked bread of His presence to float through our streets
filling the air like incense, drawing all those who are
tired and needy. I look forward to the time when
restaurant owners have to close down their restaurants
because the ovens are turned up at the church down the
street – fresh bread is being served and the entire town
is eating it up. Let’s get on with the task at hand.
Light the fire – kindle the stove – turn up the heat
– let Jesus show up and bring to the world the bread of
His presence.
FLR
In
Praise of Hollandaise
“A
hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.”
Samuel
Butler
“You
can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
French
proverb
“When
Jesus Christ shed his blood on the cross, it was not the
blood of a martyr; or the blood of one man for another; it
was the life of God poured out to redeem the world.”
Oswald
Chambers (1874–1917)
Why
is it that every restaurant in town is packed with a
twenty minute wait at 1:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon? It
seems that the magical hours between 12:00 and 1:00 are
the most grueling hours for cooks in restaurants on
Sunday. In ala carte restaurants, you have changed over
all your production from breakfast to lunch and the
morning cook is getting ready to head home at 1:00. Most
of the time, all the breakfast goodies have long
disappeared, the ingredients for omelets, the diced ham,
diced tomatoes and grated cheese. The eggs are back in the
walk-in. The hash browns are frozen and burger orders are
starting to come in. It never fails though – on Sunday
– even more than on Saturday – everyone wants
breakfast and you inevitability scramble around trying set
up for breakfast at the last minute, even though you know
that this is going to happen 52 weekends out of every
year.
The
reason why you are busy is, well, to be simplistic, -
HUNGER PAINS! No really, it is the same every Sunday. I
should know I have spent the last 30 years feeding those
hunger pains. Not my own mind you, but everyone else’s;
I wouldn’t usually grab a bite to eat until about 3:00
in the afternoon. My Sunday mornings usually go like this;
I would get up at 5:00 am and call the kitchen to make
sure the morning crew had arrived on time. Sunday’s are
about a 50/50 hit or miss due to the world’s view of
Saturday night and an intense desire for foodies to go out
and party. I would rush in to work, walk the café to
ensure everything is going well, then head to the main
kitchen and begin to set up for Sunday Brunch. If I am
lucky, they pulled the ice carving out of the freezer to
temper. If I am really lucky, they did not break it on its
way out of the freezer. I can’t tell you how many times
in the last 30 years I have had to grab my chain saw and
carve out an ice carving only to get it up minutes before
we were ready to open. My unsung heroes did it again, its
10:00 AM, the brunch was now open; and now the crowds were
ready to come in.
You
can almost hear their growling stomachs. They shoot up
from their tables and spread out like locust upon a field
of wheat; 25% would head to the carving and omelet
station; 25% to the waffle station; and 25% to the salad
and fruit tables. The rest would head to the hot food
line. They would feast on such tempting dishes as
hand-rolled cheese blintzes topped with fresh raspberries
and almond butter sauce, or grilled swordfish laced with
roasted red pepper & mango salsa. One of the more
popular items is the classic - Eggs Benedict delicately graced with a delightful hollandaise sauce.
That is the station my wife would head for. She loves Eggs Benedict.
She
loves it but many of my cooks didn’t. It is not that
they didn’t care for the dish as it was the hurdles they
had to overcome in its’ preparation. The two culprits in
there eyes – poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce! Now, I
am not so interested in poached eggs in this chapter, and
I had trained my cooks on the art of poaching then
submerging the eggs in ice water for later use, so the
poaching of eggs were not an issue. What I want to focus
on is the making of Hollandaise sauce, or in a broader
global sense – emulsified sauces.
Within
the heart of Hollandaise sauce there is a principle and
technique that many young cooks fail to grasp, and
struggle to master, its’ this challenge that excites me
the about hollandaise and all emulsified sauces. Within
the building blocks of a hollandaise sauce, there is a
picture that unfolds – giving you a glimpse into the
mystery of the universe. Yes, if you open your eyes you
will see the symbolism of the salvation of humanity
through the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.
Let
me explain. Hollandaise is an emulsion sauce. An emulsion
is formed when one substance is suspended in another - in
this case, clarified butter (oil) is suspended in water.
The need for an emulsion arises when, two or more
ingredients, repel each other, and chemically will not
mix. In the case of a hollandaise sauce, the two unequally
yoked items are the acids, water (cider vinegar and lemon
juice) and the oil (clarified butter). We all know that
oil and water does not mix, they need a stabilizer – an
emulsifier.
The
Question – What is an Emulsifier?
Answer:
An emulsifier is the agent that brings two liquids that
are incapable of becoming homogenous, that will not mix
together, to form a single homogeneous substance, or are
not emulsified. Examples of emulsions include crude oil,
butter and margarine, hand lotion, mayonnaise,
hollandaise, the photosensitive side of film stock, and
cutting fluid for metalworking. Emulsification is the
process by which emulsions are prepared.
Emulsions
tend to have a cloudy appearance, because a boundary
between oil and water, called an interface, and that
interface scatters light that passes through the emulsion.
Emulsions can be stable or unstable. Simple vinaigrette is
an unstable emulsion and has to be shaken continuously or
will quickly separate.
An
emulsifier or emulgent is a substance, which stabilizes an
emulsion. Examples of emulsifiers in the kitchen include
egg yolk, mustard, glucose, and nuts. Whether an emulsion
turns into a water-in-oil emulsion or an oil-in-water
emulsion depends upon the volume fraction of both phases
and on the type of emulsifier. Emulsifiers and emulsifying
particles tend to promote dispersion of the phase in which
they do not dissolve well; for example, proteins dissolve
better in water than in oil and tend to form oil-in-water
emulsions (that is they promote the dispersion of oil
droplets throughout a continuous phase of water).
Another
important factor and characteristic of an emulsion is the
requirement of energy in its formation. Anyone that has
made a large batch of hollandaise will attest to a sore
arm the next day - part of the price to be paid in its’
preparation. It is this agitation, tension, and constant
whipping that enables the emulsifiers within the egg yolk
(lecithin) to bring together the acids (water) and the oil
(butter) in the formation of the sauce.
The
molecular structure of compounds within the yolk, such as
lecithin and cholesterol are emulsifiers. In the later,
cholesterol stabilizes water-in-oil emulsions for sauces such as mayonnaise. Hollandaise,
on the other hand uses lecithin, which has a larger
water-soluble head and stabilizes oil-in-water
emulsions. You get the picture. Let’s move on.
Now
let’s take a deeper look at the preparation of this
sauce; starting with the problem – incompatibility! As I
stated earlier, oil and water do not mix. A dilemma that
is very parallel to the problem that has plagued all of
creation since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. It
is the curse, eternal separation between God and
humanity. Because of the curse, humanity was expelled from
the presence of God, unable to freely be united with Him.
An eternal void entered into the heart of man. God and
humanity had become two unequally yoked entities, two
substances that repel each other. Like the acid and oil in
our Hollandaise, they were forever separated until the
emulsification takes place. There was a need for a
mediator, an emulsifier so to speak, to unite God and man.
Even
the prophets of old cried out for a solution to this
dilemma. To quote Isaiah:
“Oh
that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest
come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy
presence”
King
James
Version,
Isaiah 64: 1
Who
is this great emulsifier that would unite mankind with God
again? The answer, in
our recipe, is the egg yolk. An egg is a remarkable
thing. The eggs botanical counterpart being seeds
– are the most nutritious food on earth, not to mention,
their place in the first promise of redemption found in
scripture. In God’s judgment upon the serpent, he said,
“And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel.”
King
James
Version, Gen. 3:15
From
the scriptures, we know that Jesus is the seed
of the woman and that He crushed the head of Satan at
Calvary
. Are you starting to see a picture come together, some
consistencies? Then we have that eternal question. Which
came first the chicken or the egg? The Church Fathers
sided with the chicken, pointing out that according to
Genesis, God first created the creatures, not their
reproductive units. The Victorian Samuel Butler awarded
the egg priority in significance, when he said, “a
chicken is just an eggs’ way of making another egg.”
Personally, I agree with the Church Fathers.
In
its’ simplest definition the egg is composed of three
parts, the white (albumen), the yolk, and the shell. In
our recipe the yolk must be separated
from its’ other two components. If I my take the
liberty, I will compare the egg to the Godhead and show
the yolk as the Son of God. It is here that we have the
incarnation. In the first step, the shell is cracked and
broken open and the yolk is pulled away from its’
rightful place. The yolk is tossed into a cold stainless
steal bowl. Lonely and isolated, with one mission in mind
– the yolks must unite that which chemically cannot be
mixed, our sinful
nature with a Holy
God. In order to do this the yolks have to endure terrible
suffering.
The
creator of the sauce places the stainless steal bowl over
hot simmering water. He adds his vinegar mixture to the
yolks; pulls out a wire whip and begins to beat the egg
yolks; causing the flesh of the yolks to be broken. The
heat of the water intensifies and the yolks begin to cook
under turbulence and torture, as the whip moves, until
there is no life left in the yolks. Then - at just the
right moment - the creator of the sauce removes the bowl
from the boiling water and begins to whip in the warm
butter (the oil of God). Suddenly… as if by some
miracle… an emulsion begins to take place. The yolks
that were once dead come back to life, the acidic mixture,
that was once separated from the presence of the oil, is
now united by the work of our mediator the yolks (Jesus).
It was the process of agitation and tension (beaten and
crucified) that enabled the emulsification to take place.
When the oil of God is fully incorporated into the cooked
mixture, the sauce is complete and He has risen - It is
finished!
“For
there is one God, and one mediator [emulsifier] between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a
ransom for all, to be testified in due time.”
King
James
Version,
1 Timothy 2:5, 6
All
around us, the Lord proclaims His eternal truth. His
desire is that all humanity would come to the saving
knowledge of faith found in Jesus Christ. Look around you.
Everywhere you turn the Spirit is pointing you to Jesus,
all you have to do is listen. Look around - milk, cream,
butter, mayonnaise, cosmetic creams, floor and furniture
waxes, some paints, asphalt, and even crude oil, are all
emulsions symbolically pointing to Christ. As you look
around the world or in your workplace – what do you see?
I challenge you… If you look hard, enough you will see
the Holy Spirit prompting you to look deeper – and see
the salvation of the Lord.
“After
this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished,
that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they
filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and
put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the
vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head,
and gave up the ghost.”
The
King
James
Version,
John 19:28-30
If
you do not know Him and the power of His saving grace, I
encourage you to let Jesus come into your life. Give Jesus
a chance he is more than able to meet you where you are
and forgive you of all your sins. You see, relationship
with God will only happen under the process of
emulsification. We cannot help our condition just as
water, acid, vinegar cannot help that they repel to oil.
Nevertheless, there is an answer to this dilemma. Jesus,
left his home, as God in heaven, and came down to earth in
the form as a man, much like the separation of the yolk
from the egg. Jesus gathered all the sins of humanity,
past, present, and future and placed them upon his self,
and was crucified on a cross as judgment for those sins.
Jesus arose from the dead, and in doing conquered sin and
death. Today, He sits at the right hand of the Father
ready to emulsify the pieces of your life back to God.
Give
Jesus the chance to make you a new creature – a sauce
fit for a king and he will do it. Only after your life is
re-united with God will it have true meaning. God will
cause a beauty to come out in your life that will have
fragrance and flavor to it. It will be refreshing to all
those in your life and those around you. It will be the
finest béarnaise draped over a tender filet or the most
delicate hollandaise laced a top of a moist poached egg.
Without Him, your life is as a cruet of vinegar on a dusty
restaurant table – never able to enjoy the pleasure of
being married to the oil of heaven.
[A
Nibble]
The
Evidence of Things Not Seen
The
Christian man knows that he is but a stranger and
pilgrim; and he comforts himself, as he goes through
the wilderness, thinking of the home towards which
he is traveling. And he weaves tapestries, and
paints pictures, and carves various creations.
Living, as he does, by faith, and not merely by
sight, his imagining, his picture-painting, his
idealizing, his holy reverie, are filling the great
empty heavens with all conceivable beauty. And what
if it be evanescent? So is the wondrous
frost-picture on the window; but is it not beautiful
and worth having? So is the dummer dew upon the
flower; but is it not renewed night by night? And
faith is given to man to life him above the carnal,
the dull, the sodden, and to enable him to conceive
of things beyond that to which any earthly
realization has yet ever attained.
Copyright 2006 - International Association of Cooks for Christ.
All rights reserved.
