Keys to the Kingdom

By Carolyn Tucker

Wasabi vs Guacamole

From the time I was born until I was five years old, my family lived in California. We had an avocado tree in our back yard and my family enjoyed eating that fruit/veggie. My favorite way to eat an avocado is simply peeled, sliced, and salted. I make homemade guacamole simply by smashing it with a fork and adding salt. In 2008, we took a family vacation to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and on one of our outings we dined at a Japanese buffet. As I made my food choices, I spotted a big batch of guacamole and scooped a big pile onto my plate and joined my hubby and kids at the table. WOW! Did I get a surprise! This was not guacamole; it was wasabi, which is a Japanese word that means green, creamy FIRE! It instantly brought on a sharp mouth-burning and sinus-clearing heat that was unbelievable! My family found my stupidity to be quite humorous. I can’t remember if my tears were from laughing or pain – probably both.

Looks sure can be deceiving! If I’d used my brain, I would have known that this green creamy stuff would not be guacamole since I wasn’t in a Mexican restaurant. Not everything that glitters is gold.

In writing to the church of Galatia, apostle Paul packs a great punch of strong flavor to the Christ followers there.“Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside). [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap” (Galatians 6:7 AMP). Believers are not to be fooled, mistaken, led astray, or tricked. No one mocks the justice/ways of God and gets by with it. Whatever you sow, that’s what you’ll get. You’ll reap exactly what you plant.

God’s Word declares what sin is, but our culture persists in being mislead by redefining the truth. And Christ followers must not be guilty of ignoring the holy scriptures either. I could have sat in that Japanese restaurant and beat my fist on the table and screamed that I was eating guacamole, but it wouldn’t have changed the truthful facts that I had been deceived. My mouth was painfully reaping what I had planted in it. We must be on high alert and remember that God’s love, mercy, grace, and divine forgiveness cannot alter His law of sowing and reaping.

God would not be God if we could sow evil and reap good. Believers can’t afford to be misled by thinking we can change God’s theology in the way He operates. There’s a rich payoff in prayerfully studying His Word. Everything that God declares can be taken to the bank. Since God cannot be outwitted, no one should be deceived in thinking that he/she can dodge the consequences of a dimwitted choice.

It’s been said: “A man is free to choose, but is not free to choose the consequences of his choice.” I was free to choose whatever I wanted from the buffet. I made one foolish mistake and suffered the consequences immediately. Could I have avoided making this wrong choice? Yes, by considering what ethnic restaurant I was in and then using common sense.

The Key: Carefully evaluate everything that seems to be too good to be true.

By Patty LaRoche

By the time God got around to creating Adam and Eve, He must have been in a jolly good mood. Time to have some fun, He told Himself. Why else would He create a kajillion differences between the two genders? He factored in not just the DNA (reminder: women are XX, the more balanced of the two, while men are XY), but basically every conceivable variance.

Take, for instance, golfing. Dave and I now have a home with a backyard view of the golf course, and we have been fascinated by the difference in how the two sexes team up to play the game. If there are six men golfing, six carts will be used, but if six women are playing, they will sit on each other’s laps to share a cart. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but at the most, for six women there will be two or three carts, not six.

Cart use is not the only difference. Women, unlike men, will visit about dozens of things other than their score while playing the game. That’s because women are all about relationships, not goals. Men? Nope. They will know who hit a birdie or an eagle, what the handicaps are, or who got a promotion, but nothing about who is getting married or who is in the hospital or how many grandchildren the other men have (unless, of course, those grandkids are scratch golfers).

Wives of golfers often discuss how little their husbands learn about their golfing buddies after spending hours with them on the course. “What did you learn today?” is a silly question to ask their husbands because the only thing on which Hubby focused was who golfed well and who did not. Women, on the other hand, will come home with news about everyone’s personal life, news their husbands do not care to hear.

To prove my point, a majority of Fortune 1000 CEOs said they did business with a golf partner. Correspondingly, 400 out of 500 Fortune 500 executives said that golf gave their careers a boost. For males, golf appears to be goal-oriented.

Perhaps that’s why golfer James Murray said, “Show me a man who is a good loser and I’ll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss.”

That’s not to say that golf cannot aid females in the work world. My daughter-in-law Kira recently applied to be a pilot for a private flying company. When the C.E.O. asked her what hobbies she has, Kira said that she has taken up golf.

“I hate golf,” the owner said. “Too much time spent trying to do something that can’t be done.” Kira was sharp. “Then we both have that in common because I hate it too.” Kira got the job.

When I asked my golfing sons about the six-cart issue, they said that it speeds up the game because each man drives his own cart to wherever his ball is. If two men share one cart, they have to drive to two different locations—which takes time (time women will use to discuss their families and build friendships).

I wonder if God just shakes His head when He watches His creation display their differences in something as simple as driving a golf cart. Or maybe He just smiles. Yes, I think I’ll go with that one.