The Onion

IT ALL STARTED WITH A LONELY ONION. My family had travelled to a theme park for spring break and was staying in a 1970 rental nearby. As I was preparing a pasta soup for dinner that first night, I was trying to chop an onion, well, hew an onion. Like most rentals, the kitchen utensils were cheap, meaning no one would ever take them home, thus my dilemma. First off, my knife wouldn't cut straight, so rather than cut through the onion, the knife was trying to make a circular slash. Yes, the knife. Not me. I had to start sawing. I had really wanted to dice an entire onion to start my soup but barely got a third sawn off. Now to dice. Needless to say, I had already spent fifteen minutes. Mind you, diced onion was just the first ingredient. I began to slice and individually cut each piece simply because that knife couldn't handle any more. Sometimes, just sometimes, when something simple in my life takes such effort, I ask the Lord what is going on.

My frustration came down to two things—a dull tool and a vital flavor.

These are things that hinder and help, and I began to consider them both. I asked the Lord if I had any dullness. Was there something He had given me that I had left alone? Was there anything that I was trying to do without Him? I didn’t want to be the one who hid her gold talent in the ground because I was afraid to try [Matthew 25].

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For everyone who has something will be given more, so that he will have more than enough; but from anyone who has nothing, even what he does have will be taken away.

​This was two years ago, and the first hints of writing were working in my heart even then. It was time to act, to do. Please, God, let me be faithful with my small amount.

And then there’s flavor. How could I make soup without flavor? became Does my life have flavor? Is it truly fruitful? In Matthew 13, Jesus told them another parable: 
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The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches. He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

​Mustard seeds and yeast. Flavors that grow.
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God’s kingdom is just that, an entire kingdom. It has everything we have need of, every resource, every bit of His goodness for us. EVERYTHING. And the kingdom’s nature is to multiply. In Luke 17, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is within us. My prayer, my trust, is that Christ in me is multiplying and leading me in fruitfulness.