Keys to the Kingdom By Carolyn Tucker
KuneKune BBQ
My daughter, Mariam, is having the time of her life raising farm animals on their little homestead. A few years ago, she acquired two KuneKune (cooney cooney) piglets. The name of this breed means “fat and round” and they produce high-quality pork. KuneKunes are friendly, docile, and easy to handle which made them sweet and fun pets. My three granddaughters were told from the get-go that Cookie and Oreo would eventually end up on a dinner plate, and they were OK with that because they love bacon.
When the big pigs were butchered, there wasn’t enough freezer space to store all the meat. So Mariam brought a bunch of it in a black trash bag to store at my house. One day my son Aaron was at my house and he put some venison burger in the deep freeze. I mentioned that there were several outdated packages of meat, so he took the hint and started cleaning it out. I couldn’t oversee this project because I was cooking our Thanksgiving meal — so he was on his own. He took all the old stuff out and threw it on my brush pile in the pasture (to be burned sometime in the future).
When all the family was enjoying our holiday meal together, I mentioned the good job Aaron had done in cleaning out the deep freeze for me. My daughter’s eyes got as big as quarters as she looked at her brother and, with a mouthful of pickled beets, point-blank asked, “You didn’t throw away my KuneKune pig meat did you?!” Aaron nonchalantly answered, “I don’t know, maybe.” The end of the story is yes, he threw it out, but she retrieved it from the burn pile, still in the bag and still frozen.
Aaron simply didn’t take the time to open the trash bag and look inside, therefore, he didn’t know what was in it. It’s been said that believers live below our privileges as children of God. The Word of God is full of promises but many of them are never “cashed in” because we don’t know what they are! We must open the Bible to read and study it so we won’t be ignorant. For example, we may personally pay for damage to our home when, in fact, we have insurance that would cover the cost. Ignorance is certainly not bliss when it comes to knowing God’s inexhaustible spiritual riches.
God gave Apostle Paul the special responsibility of preaching salvation to the Gentiles. “And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6 NLT). God’s riches are our spiritual blessings as we daily live our lives in Him. Let’s read God’s Word to find out what inexhaustible riches are ours. When I purchased a new dishwasher, I read the owner’s manual in order to benefit from all the available options.
Apostle Paul wrote: “Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, He graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ” (Ephesians 3:8 NLT). Paul wrote letters (manuals) to the churches in the Books of Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians. If we want to walk in the spiritual blessings that God intends for us, let’s study the Owner’s Manual from cover to cover and stake our claim.
The Key: Don’t burn, through ignorance, what’s rightfully yours.