F is for Food: Inspiring Takeaways from Lucille Osborn's Psalm 34:8 Cooking Series

This weekend I had the unique and incredible experience of attending a session in the Psalm 34:8 cooking series, led by Lucille Osborn.

Lucille is a freelance food stylist, which means her job is to make food look irresistibly appetizing for various television programs and cookbooks. This alone is inspiring to me, because it provides a perfectly good explanation for why everything I cook looks so incredibly unappetizing: it's simply because I'm not a professional!

Lucille is a professional, and she's also the creator of the Psalm 34:8 cooking series, which explores Scripture through interactive cooking demonstrations. By "interactive cooking demonstrations" I mean to say that you get to eat the food she makes during the class; to literally taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8)

Don't mind if I do.

This particular lesson was on the Parable of the Talents, and there were all sorts of amazing takeaways from the lesson itself. And from the food. (Did I mention the food?) But for me, the biggest takeaway was how simply and creatively Lucille is using who she is to serve the Lord.

This A to Z blog challenge is really challenging me to be more open and vulnerable, because you can only write so many surface-level blog posts before you have to get real. So let me get real with you again today: as a Christian writer, I often find myself wrestling with what it means to do it all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

That's difficult for me to admit, but it's true. I mean, I get that writing for the glory of God means being a good steward of resources that result from my writing, and being careful not to turn God's gift of writing into an idol, etc. etc. etc. The stories I write are what you would call  good clean fun, because that's just who I am as a writer. They have their themes, sure, and I'm contracted with a Christian publisher, so I must be doing something right. But still, I often wonder if I'm missing the mark; if everything I write should be a heavy, life-changing, world-shaking theological masterpiece. Maybe, I've often thought, that's what it means to write for the glory of God. And maybe that's the only way to do it.

I am so thankful for people who can write like that (I usually start each morning with their words, in fact), but I'm not one of them. Maybe someday I will be, but for now (to speak in terms of the Parable of the Talents) I'm more of a two-talent type of girl, and it's my job to wisely use and invest what I've been given to make an impact for the Lord. Lucille showed me in a very tangible (and delicious) way how she is using who she is to relate to others and speak truths.

It inspired me in too many ways to count and outline here (I'm on deadline, you know). So I'll just summarize by saying that Lucille's demonstration ignited an excitement for how God might use me, just the simple fact of who I am, to pour love into others I encounter on this road I'm on. It helped me to realize how very uncreative I am in comparison to The Creator. I imagine that there will be all sorts of ways to do it all for the glory of God. I imagine that there will be little moments, and big ones, too. Perhaps some days I will write life-changing, world-shaking theological masterpieces. Most days, I probably won't. But every day, I will be on the lookout for how God is calling me, in the divinely creative way that only He can orchestrate or imagine, to make an eternal impact because of who and where I am.

And who knows? Maybe I'll even learn to make perfect golden crepes, just like Lucille demonstrated.

Maybe... but I doubt it.