should be sleeping...

It was 12:45 and Health for Life was ending. I was starving! All class I’d been thinking about making meatballs and spaghetti. I walked home and started grinding the walnuts. Bah, the walnuts were crowding to the bottom of the food processor. It just wasn’t working. I finally got them put together. I like to fry meatballs on the stove, but at school I’ve been putting a little oil on the pan and baking them in the toaster oven. I poured the oil on...a little bit more than usual. I had spaghetti boiling, sauce cooking, and extra sharp cheddar cheese grated. I was washing some dishes, and I turned to see flames shooting out of top of the toaster oven. It was making some alarming noises (insert onomatopoeia here). I gaped at it for several seconds. I timidly reached over and turned it off. It continued to pop, sizzle, and flame. Then I unplugged it. It calmed down. Apparently I had put too much oil in it...and the pan may have still been wet. Whoops. Oh well, nothing like a little grease fire, and I was still starving! I decided to resort to preferred method #1 and fry them. I poured some oil in the frying pan and put it on the back burner. The electric burner. I despise electric stoves. I can never tell if they’re on. (I have a gas stove at home. I like to see the fire. They’re more practical too–if we get a snow storm and the electricity goes out, at least we can eat hot food! We have a gas dryer too, so we could have warm, dry clothes...but that doesn’t have anything to do with this story.) And it just so happens that we have a problem with our front right burner on our stove here. Sometimes it doesn’t come on. I usually notice five minutes later when the water isn’t boiling. My remedy for that is to assume it’s not on, barely touch it to make sure it isn’t, and then reposition it. Alas, the oil in my frying pan on the back burner didn’t seem to be getting hot. Therefore, I touched the burner, as was my habit. Ouch. The pads of my fingers seared with pain. As I rushed to put my fingers under cold water, the first thought that popped into my mind was oh no. Juries are coming. How am I going to practice with blistered fingers? I grabbed my strawberry freezer jam jar and held onto it while I finished the meal with my left hand. Praise the Lord, it turned out that the skin on my fingers....well burned, but it didn’t blister. It became hard and I had no feeling at the area of devastation. I began to think that burners are like life. I hope that my life is like a gas burner. Can you see Jesus shining out of me? Or are you left to wonder if there’s anything burning at all? Can others see the flame? Don’t be like an electric burner.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matthew 5:16