My Favorite Recipe

I got my first easy bake oven when I was 8 years old and I was hooked.   I loved to bake and make my own creations.  In my early days, I flubbed a few recipes.   And I learned quickly that one missing ingredient, no matter how simple, could ruin an entire dish.  I also learned that if you had a good recipe, people would ask for it so they could make it themselves. 

I started to wonder, what if we had a recipe for happiness?  A tried-and-true recipe that worked every time you used it.  Wouldn’t a recipe like that be valuable?  Wouldn’t you ask for a copy of it so that you could go home and make it for yourself?

I believe there is a recipe for happiness.  And I don’t think it’s all that complicated.  The ingredients may vary from person to person; however, I believe that there is a main ingredient that cannot be substituted or omitted.

Just as a cake missing a main ingredient will collapse in the oven.  So too our world will collapse around us when we are missing the main component for happiness.  It is so simple, so easy, that it is often overlooked. 

What is this one magical element in our recipe for happiness?  It’s love.  It’s the missing ingredient in our schools, in our workplaces, on our city streets, and in our country.  Plain and simple, we have forgotten how to love one another.

Jesus left us with a simple command.  Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. For me, the loving God part is easier.  It is only by loving God that we truly learn how to love.  God is the foundation of love. 

The second part; loving our neighbors as ourselves, is a little harder.  I interpret this to mean that we should treat ourselves with love and extend that love to our neighbors. 

Do you suppose that we have forgotten that love starts with us first?  That we must fill ourselves with love before we have the ability to give love away?  That if our love “gas tank” is sitting on empty we are going to run out of the fuel it takes to show compassion and forgiveness, to be considerate, and meet the needs of our neighbors?

I believe this is a crucial piece of the puzzle, otherwise, Jesus command could have simply stopped at “love your neighbors”.  But it didn’t. 

Loving our neighbors as ourselves is not always easy. But it begins with filling ourselves with love. We were created with a great capacity for love. So that it seeps into the marrow of our bones.  So that it overflows our hearts to the very rims of our souls.  So that when we are tipped over it spills out of us in a steady, unrestrained stream.  That is the magnitude we have for love. 

Let’s focus on filling ourselves with love.  Because we can’t give away what we don’t have.