Ribs

Sitting in church, squirming in my seat! If my mother were sitting beside me, she would've pinched my thigh to get me to sit still like she used to do when I was a little boy in church. I'm kind of glad she wasn't there....that hurt! I was listening, but I wasn't listening. I was participating, but I wasn't participating. It was like I was viewing everything close from a far off distance; like Sarah Palin who can see Russia from her house in Alaska. I had one thing on my mind.....ribs!!

Two pounds of beef ribs, marinated for 24 hours in spices and liquids sure to enhance their flavor to much higher euphoric qualities. Two pounds of beef ribs lovingly and gently placed in a 6-quart crock pot and slow cooked for 12 tenderizing hours. Ribs! That is what was on my mind as the pastor expounded upon the wonders and majesty of God's Word. I'm a spiritual giant alright!! I couldn't wait to get home....already tying a bib around my neck as I drove out of the church parking lot.

Breaking the speed limit to get home, I noticed that posted speed limit signs are more like suggestions when I'm hungry and on mission to eat. I would've broken the sound barrier if I could've pushed my 6-cylinder, 4-door sedan that fast. Fortunately, the law enforcement fraternity was evidently in coffee and donut shops getting their fill at the time of my travel because the interstate was void of them. Personally I think that was God's grand design....he wanted me to have those ribs too!!

Drooling so heavily at the thought of succulent, marinated, slow-cooked rib meat melting in my mouth, my pant legs were wet when I got out of the car. Bursting through the door of my apartment, I didn't walk up the stairs, I didn't run up the stairs; I cleared them all in one single bound....a feat only Superman could perform....until now. As the lovable canine in the bacon treat commercial keeps repeating, "Bacon, bacon, bacon!"...in his frantic search for the coveted morsels, I kept repeating, "Ribs, ribs, ribs!"

Rushing around the corner of my living room into the kitchen, I stopped briefly to appreciate what seemed to be a heavenly glow around that 6-quart container that was gently caressing "my precious"! It was a sacred pause, a sacred moment. The container "called" to me and I responded by lifting the lid with such force, had I not had a firm grip, it would have flown through my balcony door window like a Frisbee!

Wide-eyed with excitement, still drooling everywhere, I peered inside the pot anticipating a culinary treasure even Emeril would envy. To my horror, I found my ribs in such a state I had to turn my head in utter disgust. All of those succulent morsels of flavor had become encased in the translucent goo of the fat that surrounded them. As the Man of War jellyfish ensnares its prey, so this repulsive fat had ensnared the morsels of meat I was greedily getting ready to devour.

There was a sudden loss of appetite and a fighting back of the gag reflex that so desperately wanted to take control. Looking at rancid hamburger would've been more palatable than this offensive conglomeration of YUCK! After the shock and disappointment wore off, I put an oven mitt on one hand and wrapped the other in a towel. I lifted the hot clay pot out of its cooking element and slowly walked down the stairs to discard the contents of "my precious" in the trash. I felt like a dead man walking and I fought back tears with each step.

After discarding the inedible ribs in the dumpster, a thought from scripture popped into my head...

"We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like Autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind." - Isa. 64:6 NLT

For all the hours of thawing, marinating, and slow-cooking....those ribs ended up on the dumpster floor, a feast for flies, worms, and other unmentionable creepy crawlers. My best efforts weren't enough to keep the end result from disaster and disappointment.

Then I thought of my life....for all the things I do, the people I help, and the difference I attempt to make in this world for good....those things are no better than the inedible ribs on a dumpster floor when done on my own. My righteous acts the Bible says are as filthy rags. I realized just in the thought of that verse, I needed a righteousness that went far beyond me, a righteousness not my own. With gratitude, I also realized that I have that....for I have the righteousness of Christ. It is his righteousness in me that makes my deeds top-shelf.... What he does in and through me is the only righteousness that counts and the Bible teaches when we come to him, he clothes us in it. All of him, none of me. What eternal good I do, he does through me. It is to his credit, not to mine.
It is to his glory, not to mine.

Even though I didn't listen much in church; and even though I settled for a tuna fish sandwich and potato chips, God was still teaching me....through ribs!