Terry: The Lord turns out some fine biscuits

I’m not crazy about reposting random stuff on Facebook. I do it on rare occasion because it really hit home.

I shared a little ditty the other day that really hit me where I’m living right now.

Karl Terry

It’s a story about a deacon who got asked by the preacher to lead an opening prayer at a church service somewhere in the South. The deacon got up and started his prayer by saying “Lord, I hate buttermilk.” He paused, and the preacher wondered where this was going.

“Lord, I hate lard,” the man prayed. The whole congregation began to squirm and the preacher became concerned.

“Lord, I ain’t too crazy about plain flour, but when you mix ‘em all together and bake ‘em in a hot oven, I sure love biscuits!”

He wrapped it all up saying, “Lord, help us to realize when life gets hard, when things come up that we don’t like, whenever we don’t understand what you are doing, we need to wait and see what you are making. It’ll probably be even better than biscuits. Amen.”

Lately I’ve felt like all I’ve been doing is stirring up biscuits. I’d gotten a little tired of that sour buttermilk smell. Some days I wasn’t too sure what I was doing was making a difference. It had been a long time since I smelled those biscuits all ready to come out of the oven.

Anybody who had a mama that baked biscuits from scratch can relate to what I’m saying. There’s nothing like the first few minutes after those fluffy delights come out of the pan and begin to melt the butter you spread across their warm insides.

I’m speaking metaphorically here, of course, comparing those fleeting moments of warm biscuits with the rewards of reaching goals or finally making sense of some of your struggles.

The pleasure of turning out a perfect pan of biscuits may seem pretty fleeting to us but the act of doing things the right way and having the patience to wait for the reward changes us, raises our standards and makes the hard work easier to bear.

The notion that God knows what he’s doing when he leads us into drudgery or trying times gives us hope. I’ve got to trust that he can probably turn out a lot better pan of biscuits if I quit questioning his recipe.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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