I remember pies with strips of sparkling crust gracefully laid across the oval surface like soft fluffy lattice. Underneath would be apple, cherry, or blackberry fruit mixed into a sweet warm blend waiting for giant scoops of snowy ice cream. The melting milky flow would meander to the edges of that mountain of delight as it drew out delicious heat wet with savor. With spoon in hand and gleaming eye, I would peer just over the lip of the porcelain counter top of the antique flower sifter kitchen cabinet. My portion would peak, mushroomed above the bowl’s brim and barley visible from the low angle of my perspective glare. I now pine with watering mouth at the remembrance and smell of what can no longer rouse my olfactory passion. Those were the days.
But my grandparents came of age and the hands that moulded strips of dough were the younger hands of my parents. Then they came of age and time has passed and holidays are taking on a character of their own that distinguish them from those that reside in my memory. The deserts are different but what sustains the family is more than traditional rituals peculiar to my kin.
What is important for family is not the craft of pie making or the setting of the table or the sifter built into the kitchen cabinet. It is not the address of the home where we gather. It is not the traditions that can replace what really is important if we lose our focus and allow the customary to take us out of the sanctuary. The word of salvation is the central priority because it is in its nature to survive, so that what we commemorate is genuine in quality and passes from generation to generation unhindered and undiluted. Not pies or settings or location, but eternal security of the heart. It never passes away. The important housing that we must construct is that which becomes an ark for the preserving of souls rather that rituals.
“By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7).
Stephen Williams