National Pie/Pi Day Fail

A little crispy

This is what you get when you leave the house in a hurry with a pie in the oven after you THOUGHT you turned it off but all you did was turn off the timer. Some days it doesn’t pay to do ANYthing. Just stay in bed.

Tomorrow is National Pie day and since pies are one of my most impressive talents, I needed very little encouragement. I thought I’d show off to whoever’s around and make a peach pie from the yummy frozen Colorado peaches we still have in the freezer. I whipped out a crust put in the filling. Then left the house with it baking away. Two hours later: this.

And now my ankle break which has been healing nicely, hurts like the dickens because I stood around rolling pie crust and hopping about the island with flour down my front and sticky peach juice spilled on the floor

It was supposed to be bonus! because Pie Day coincides with Pi day so if you eat a piece of pie at precisely 9:26 and 53 seconds a.m., which I planned to do, the date and time will be 3141592653….. and something magic will happen. I can’t tell you what. After you eat mine, the magic might be a dose of barium sulfate.

Peach Pie. Anyone? Anyone?

The irony of this is that only yesterday I signed up to bring two pies to our church for a bake sale. Now I’ll probably not only be kicked off the list I may be sent to confession for pride and avarice (in this case greed for praise).

I only tell you this because a few people, not many, I admit, have been deceived into thinking I’m a great cook and furthermore, a perfect person. I try to be honest….

Humilty

“Thank God often and always…Thank God, carefully and wonderingly for your continuing privileges. …Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.

             “Take care about the confession of your sins. Be sure to criticize yourself in God’s presence that is your self-examination. Put yourself under the divine criticism: that is your confession.

            “Be ready to accept humiliations. They can hurt terribly, but they help you to be humble. There can be the trivial humiliations. Accept them. There can be the bigger humiliations… All these can be so many chances to be a little nearer to our humble and crucified Lord…

            “Do not worry about status… here is only one status that our Lord bids us to be concerned with, and that is the status of proximity to himself…

            “Use your  sense of humor. Laugh about things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh about yourself, and about your own absurdity. We are all of us infinitesimally small and ludicrous creatures within God’s universe. You have to be serious, but never be solemn, because if you are solemn about anything, there is the risk of becoming solemn about yourself.”

 (From The Radical Disciple by John Stott where he quotes Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury on the topic of humility.)

           There is something so attractive, so compelling about people who are humble. Especially when from our perspective they might have cause for pride. I look for people like this to be examples, to be models. Being Christ-like is not something I’m a natural at (who is?) so my desire to be what God wants me to be is nurtured by such as John Stott. He helps me keep walking toward Christ with my humiliations and absurdities dogging me all the way.