Just Like Butter

Every morning I ask God to give me inspiration to write; I submit to whatever He wants me to share. Often I am surprised. They are not my ideas; they come from His inspiration. Today, I made the usual simple request; two words popped loudly into my mind...rendered butter.

RENDERED BUTTER!!??!! WHAT??!!!??

Yep, that was my reaction. I started chuckling because it seems so far from, I don't know..... sane?!! Scripture tells us the Lord uses the foolish the confound the wise. I don't consider myself wise but rendered butter certainly seemed foolish! Where are you taking me, Lord?

Since I was online anyway, I quickly went a-googling. I love cooking and have used rendered butter though for the life of me, I didn't know where God was headed. For those of you that might not know, rendering is the process of separating the parts of butter. Here's what I found on rendering butter:

Clarified butter is pure butterfat. Ghee is clarified butter that has been simmered longer to highly clarify the butterfat. Drawn butter is clarified butter served with boiled or steamed seafood. The purpose of clarifying butter is to allow the chef to cook with butter at a higher temperature than would be possible with whole butter. The milk solids in whole butter scorch easily and lower its smoking point.

Ok, there it is. I've read it several times now. Drawing an analogy in the spiritual realm, God would represent the chef; we would be the butter. The challenges we face certainly can be represented by the heat used in the rendering process. Whole butter, while mighty tasty, isn't very useful in cooking as is. Who among us has not thrown a pat of butter into a hot skillet only to find it immediately turning from brown to black in a blink of the eye while smoking something awful? The heat of the challenges in our lives reveal the measure of our spiritual maturity.

Walking our Christian walk is definitely a process. As we grow in our knowledge of God - His ways, His will - we learn that through prayer we have an open line of communication with Him. As we stand on our faith when the fires of life engulf us, we are being clarified, made more useful to Him as witnesses. If we crash and burn with the first flames of heat, we're not useful at all and our witness is nothing but smoke.

Here's a bit more of what I found in that article online: The process of clarifying butter is as follows - Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Continue to cook over low heat until the butterfat becomes very clear and the milk solids drop to the bottom of the pot. Skim the surface foam as the butter clarifies. Pour or ladle off the butterfat into another container, being careful to leave all the liquid in the pan bottom. Discard the liquid.

Well now! I don't know about you, but I sure don't want to be skimmed off as foam or discarded as useless at the bottom of the pot! Notice: the heat never stops! Sounds like life to me!

Another tidbit you might find insightful: When whole butter is clarified, some of its volume is lost during skimming and decanting. One pound of whole butter yields approximately 12 ounces of clarified butter. What that says to me is that not all that go through the rendering process of God will make it to being clarified and useful. All will be processed, some will be discarded.

I don't know if this makes sense to you or not. Ask God to show you what He wants YOU to get from it. If you get something different, please share. I do not claim to be an authority on anything, especially things of God. He gives each of us what He wants us to learn. I just share what He shows me.

God has given me things that seem to come from left field before but hearing 'rendered butter' today seemed to come from out of the ballpark. Never underestimate the creativeness of the Lord!!