Hide the Egg!

The following was the first ever entry I submitted to Faithwriter's Weekly Challenge. It placed in the top 40 (I think it was 37th) for all of the entries that week. It was first published on Faithwriters, as a Challenge entry, on Jan 7, 2007.

Hide the Egg!

“Okay, Gregory, hide the egg!” I’d discovered a way to get actual help from my preschoolers when making cookies. Hiding each ingredient meant stirring effectively until you could no longer find the egg, four, etc in the dough. The egg was never hidden by simply scrapping the top with the spoon. Yet this was no ordinary game of hide-and-go-seek. We could never again find the egg and take it out of the cookies. It was now part of the cookie dough, chemically changing it.

When I first started baking as a teenager, I made cookies once without one of the major ingredients. They came out flat, both in looks and in taste. The same is true with our Christian walk. If we neglect Bible Study, or prayer, or fellowship with other believers, our lives become flat. We do not live the type of witness that attracts our non-Christian friends and co-workers to Christ.

Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”(NIV) Just as the kids needed to work at hiding the egg in the cookie dough, we need to be intentional about hiding His Word in our hearts. James warns, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22 NIV) We cannot simply let the spoon of God’s Word touch our ears without allowing it to stir our hearts, to change our lives. We are called to let His Word penetrate our lives so much that the world cannot separate us from the Gospel of Christ.

As I look to the New Year, I ask myself how intentional have I been at hiding His Word in my heart? How well have I allowed His Word to become part of who I am? When others look at me, do they see the old, sin-nature self, or do they see the new creation that I became in Christ Jesus? (“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV) It is my New Year’s Prayer and resolution that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I will be disciplined in becoming more like Christ, that others will see Him when they look at me.