Soup From Bones

The LORD answered Moses . . . “Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. . . . Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.”

—Exodus 17:5–6

This week I made soup from bones, which is essentially making a meal out of things that would otherwise become garbage. As a little girl, I loved the Little House on the Prairie books. I got them for my sixth birthday in a yellow cardboard box set and reread them every year. Making soup from bones seemed like something that Ma would do in the winter, while Pa was breaking the icicles from the cows’ noses so they didn’t freeze.

I chopped garlic, onions, carrots, and celery. I boiled the bones in my big red soup pot. I added some leftover turkey and a handful of rice, and all of a sudden, soup!

That plain old turkey soup made me feel like a miracle worker or a magician, bringing something from nothing. There’s a particular beauty to that idea for me because I’ve spent so long feeling like a pile of bones, and the idea that these old bones can make something lovely and sustaining moves me. That’s the heart of the story of God and people and his hands in the world. All through history, he’s making soup from bones, life from death, water from rocks, love from hate.