I decided to make cookies this morning. Fancy, lovely, Valentine’s Day cookies. For these fancy cookies, I started with a chocolately dough for rolled cookies. I used ruffled-edge heart cookie cutters to make a sandwich-style cookie. The top layer had a heart cut-out, with a dollop of raspberry jam nestled within. The chocolate-raspberry heart cookies were finished with a sprinkling of pink and red sugar. I planned to give these cookies my children at college, my parents, and perhaps my office staff. I envisioned being asked where I had purchased these amazing cookies, and I even practiced my modest reply, “Oh, well, I made these myself.”
The gulf between plans and reality once again loomed large. I followed the instructions to the letter. I rolled out the dough between wax paper, to avoid getting white flour on the deep chocolate cookies. I even baked the cookies on parchment paper- parchment paper! And yet the cookies squished and broke and did all of those things that my cookies tend to do. There were more sprinkles on the floor than on the cookies. After spending all morning on this affair, I ended up with exactly 18 cookies to show for my labor. And- they do not match the picture in my head or in the book. They are not perfect, but they are perfectly homemade. No one will doubt that I made them myself.
I heard a theologian speak last week. That person commented, “I almost wish that Jesus had never said that.” The quote being referred to was, “Be perfect, even as God in heaven is perfect.” The theologian went on to talk about how that insatiable quest for perfection can lead to countless problems. After all, if we will not accept anything less than perfection, then we will find much about ourselves or anyone else unacceptable. I am as prone to fall into that trap as anyone. None of us likes to be imperfect, and we especially don’t like for other people to know that we are imperfect. And yet . . .
Knowing that God made us and remembering that God loves us gives us great freedom within our imperfections. We don’t have to pretend to be something that we are not, because being God’s child is all we need to be. We keep trying, naturally, for the best. In the meantime, however, we celebrate that we are perfectly homemade- by God.
