Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was going to make some cookies – chocolate chip of course. I got my ingredients out – flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, salt, vanilla and nuts. I opened the drawer where I keep the chocolate chips. Hmmm. The bag was empty. Now what? It made me think.

If you leave any of these out of the recipe, the cookies do not taste as good. They might not turn out at all. And certainly would not serve the purpose I had for them.

Ever have a cookie without sugar? How about the eggs? Or the flour? Alone, these ingredients are not very good. But, together, they turn into a completed goody. The cookies need each and every ingredient.

That is how it is with the church, the body of Christ. Paul told us:

“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were and ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
I Cor. 12:14-18

Just as we need all of the ingredients for a well rounded tasty cookie, we need every egg, chip or nut who joins us. If we want to be a functioning congregation, we need to recognize God’s purpose for each one of us. Then we can grow together, worship together and rejoice and suffer together. We will truly be the “one body” that He instructed us to be.