Lessons from a Box of Pop Corn

My house smells like pop corn and it makes me smile. I LOVE pop corn. My mom & dad used to have a pop corn machine which my sister and I used so often in the afternoons after school. I have yet to buy one now that I am a mommy - guess I should put it on my pressie list ;0) I am a bit naughty by cheating and buying microwave pop corn. I just find it SO CONVENIENT to quickly pop up a box as a snack for the girls (ok ... especially for me - hee hee). Funny how smell is so powerful in triggering memories. Sitting in my lounge surrounded by this amazing aroma brings back so many wonderful memories ... sharing my first box of popcorn with my handsomeness on one of our early dates before we married ... sitting in the kitchen with my mom, granny and sister playing scrabble with a  HUGE bowl of salt and vinegar flavoured popcorn ... making lunch boxes for my girls and adding a packet of pop corn in, which reminds me of the many bags of pop corn my mom made for me :0) Such special memories.  

Why am I blogging about pop corn ... I am getting there I promise ;0)

I love that Jesus taught such simple yet life changing truths through parables when He walked the earth with His disciples. He drew on the everyday things around them to explain spiritual and life giving heart lessons. Popping a box of pop corn this afternoon took on a deeper meaning for me. As I heard the popping I started thinking about how I am always so delighted at how a little corn kernel seed can pop into something so remarkable within seconds when it is heated up hot enough! And then I started to remember a verse that my parents taught me growing up ... "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). It got me thinking about how often we say things or do things that we don't really mean when the pressure builds up. While most of the time we do not mean to intentionally harm, our words and actions come from somewhere. What pops out of us when we feel hurt, or misunderstood, betrayed, pressurized ... basically when the heat or pressure is on us? Whatever we have been mulling over and storing up in our heart has a way of eventually "popping out". It reveals our heart condition. Is this not why God says to us in Proverbs 4:23 "Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life." His words are an encouragement to us to look at the condition of our hearts. If something "pops out" that is not pleasing, life giving or a blessing to those around us, then if we are brave and humble enough to open our heart before Him who sees and cares for our heart, He is able to restore and heal and cause life to stream out of us like a spring of fresh living water. What an encouragement this thought is to me today. God loves and cares and tends to the condition of each of our hearts when we are vulnerable enough to open it up before Him. May we learn a beautiful lesson from King David in the Bible who said "Search me (thoroughly), O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24). David was no perfect man and yet because He made his heart vulnerable to God, God delighted in saying of David many years later in Acts 13:22 that He David as "a man after My own heart". God is no respecter of persons. When we live vulnerably open before God and allow Him to lead and guide us as David did ... He too says of us that we are His daughters or sons after His own heart!
Who knew God had something so precious to show us through a simple box of pop corn ;0)

All my love xxx

Janine