Flip Me, Lord

Although I don’t do it near as often as when the kids were younger, I still like to make me up a batch of pancakes on Sunday morning. There’s something fun, and perhaps an evocative memory trigger, of being a kid and enjoying the simple goodness that a stack of warm flapjacks bring.

If you’ve ever made them, or even simply seen them made, then you know that the batter is plopped onto a hot grill which browns the one side. At the perfect moment (which is where part of the fun is…) you flip it over to cook the other side. But what if…..you simply left it on the griddle and didn’t flip it? It would most certainly burn on one side and be left undone on the other.

What if God put us into some trial and left us to simmer….but failed to flip us. We, too, would end up burnt on one side and undone on the other. Christians all too often, though, seem to want this unfinished task. They go to church…wear their good face and religious attire…then go back to the “same ‘ol-same ‘ol” throughout the rest of the week. This is nothing more than being an unflipped pancake. Hot on one side and undone on the other.

God even used this metaphor when speaking through Hosea as he was chastising the nation of Israel. In chapter 7 he states, “Ephraim mixes with the nations; Ephraim is a flat loaf not turned over.”

I trust God as the perfect cook—flipping me just at the right time so I won’t burn and continuing to perfect me so I become an appealing creation. Even better, He continues that process over and over so that I can become a whole stack of pancakes—spiritually speaking—providing nutrition as I’m placed on a platter and presented before a hungry world.

Greg Morton
Copyright © June, 2015

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