The Yellow Mixing Bowl

Remember the days of long ago; think about the generations past. Ask your father, and he will inform you. Inquire of your elders, and they will tell you.

Bewildered, I stared at my family gathered around our kitchen island. I had just casually announced that after almost twenty years, I was replacing our unsightly green and yellow plastic mixing bowls, and their howls of protest caught me off guard.

“Um, you want to keep the ugly plastic bowls?” I turned from reaching into the cupboard where they were stored to look at my family, certain they were teasing.

“Mom, the yellow one is Dad’s Pancake Making Bowl. We can’t get rid of it. We need it.” Lizzie spoke, but Jon’s head was nodding furiously in agreement.

“But we can make pancakes in this new one—look, it has a handle and a spout, plus it’s stainless steel . . .” Pleading eyes and shaking heads melted away my argument as I realized that those bowls had become an essential component in my husband’s Saturday morning homemade buttermilk pancake tradition.

There are a thousand memories tied to those bowls, and they have become precious, their weekly use layering memory upon memory filled with banter and laughter, and all of it underpinned with their daddy’s love.

The mixing bowl fiasco soon had me rethinking other family heirlooms. I began looking for ways to put sentimental pieces into regular use so that new memories are embedded among the old until they, too, become as precious as those plastic bowls.

But even more important than building new memories around Great-Grandma’s Depression-era glass is passing forward the stories of God’s faithfulness, how he has provided for Aaron and me as individuals and collectively for our family. Today’s verse reminds us to share those stories, making sure Lizzie and Jon know our unending gratitude for God’s ongoing generational faithfulness as far back as I’ve been able to trace.

Just as those plastic mixing bowls remind my children of their earthly father’s love, it is the ongoing recounting of God’s stories during ordinary moments that helps launch their own relationship with their heavenly Father. It gives them a foundation for building memories of their own interactions with God’s faithful love.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Recount God’s faithfulness to you and your ancestors. Share those stories with a new generation.