Leftover Chocolates
(Yes this is off season, but one of my favorites… enjoy! It is from my upcoming book God is like a Holiday… stay tuned for more)
Ah, love is in the air. It is Valentines Day, and people are showering their special someones with gifts. If they hold true to traditions, it’ll be love notes and cards, roses, candy, jewelry, and anything else stores can market as Valentine worthy.
The big winners of Valentines day seems to be the candy makers. How they convinced us to give chalky heart shaped candy as a token of love is beyond me.
And don’t forget the heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. A favorite for many people. Created by the famous Richard Cadbury of the Cadbury British chocolate manufacturing family. He got the idea of taking eating chocolates and putting them in beautifully ornate boxes.[1]
Soon, like any smart chocolate salesman, he thought up putting pictures of cupid, hearts, and other images of love on the boxes and eventually the boxes themselves became hearts.
These heart-shaped boxes with a variety of chocolates inside have become a staple of Valentines Day. If we are honest though, not all the chocolate inside the boxes are good. Depending on the brand, you can get some weird flavors. Most people like caramel filled chocolate, but the other random flavors we’d rather go without.
The 1994 movie ,Forrest Gump cemented these boxes of chocolate in pop culture with one of the best quotes ever. In the movie the lead character, Forrest, (played by Tom Hanks) states,
“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
- Forrest Gump
Summed up beautifully and simply, Forrest told the world the truth of which everyone had felt about chocolate heart-shaped boxes of candy.
As I read through the Bible, I’m often shocked at God’s responses, actions, mindset, decisions, and requests of His people. I have so much to learn about the heart of God.
We all want to say we’ll do anything God asks. When we surrender to God, He may ask things of us with which we aren’t prepared to do.
Take God’s prophet, Ezekiel. He is passionate about God and willing to do what the Lord asks of him. And let me tell you, God asked Ezekiel to do some weird things.
God asked Ezekiel to cut his hair with a sword, to shave all his hair, to eat a scroll, and to lie on his side for around 400 days! (This represented in days the number of years Israel & Judah had been sinning against God)
God’s strangest request of Ezekiel is found in Ezekiel 4.
9 “Now go and get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and emmer wheat, and mix them together in a storage jar. Use them to make bread for yourself during the 390 days you will be lying on your side.
10 Ration this out to yourself, eight ounces of food for each day, and eat it at set times.
11 Then measure out a jar of water for each day, and drink it at set times.
12 Prepare and eat this food as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel and then eat the bread.”
13 Then the Lord said, “This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I will banish them!”
- Ezekiel 4:9-13 (NLT)
I hope you caught that. Bread baked with human dung, or poop. I’m sure you’ll never look at Ezekiel 4:9 bread at the store the same again!
Ezekiel’s response sums up: I think how most of us would feel, horrified.
14 Then I said, “O Sovereign Lord, must I be defiled by using human dung? For I have never been defiled before. From the time I was a child until now I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or was killed by other animals. I have never eaten any meat forbidden by the law.”
15 “All right,” the Lord said. “You may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung.”
- Ezekiel 4:14-15 (NLT)
The next time you ask God, “What do you want from me, Lord?” Be prepared to get any flavor of request back from the creator of the Universe.
Just like with the box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.