This wasn’t one of those wimpy baking soda and dish soap things -- this was a volcano. My friends and I stood before it, jaws dropped in awe. My cousin Tom had scored big this time.
It was Saturday afternoon and we were at the San Marcos church for the Junior Missionary Volunteer – or JMV, for short – program. Each week, the members of our small, central Texas church would gather for a JMV story, musical program or nature event. The programs were always a lot of fun but this … this was special.
The volcano my cousin had made as part of his lesson was huge. It was on a large sheet of plywood and stood maybe a foot and a half tall. Sand packed firm. And a large crater hole in the top. It was really cool.
After what seemed like an unusually long song service to us kids, the presentation finally began and the time arrived to illustrate story through the volcano. Cousin Tom dropped in his magic volcano brew and the volcano began to smoke and spew. And spew. And spew. And spew.
Cousin Tom started talking louder. But the volcano just kept on making more noise. And spewing more smoke. Pretty soon we could kind of hear Cousin Tom. But we could no longer see him. And people were coughing and wheezing everywhere.
First one mom grabbed her kids and left the church. Then another. Then everyone. By now, smoke was coming out the front door. It was some volcano.
Cousin Tom emerged from the cloud of smoke, smiled and said, “I guess I shouldn’t have quadrupled the recipe.”
No matter how hard you pressed me, there’s not a chance I could tell you what my cousin’s message was about that day. Yet I don’t suspect there’s many messages God would want more locked in this junior missionary volunteer’s mind than what I learned that day: When you don’t follow the recipe, things don’t always turn out the way you planned.
God has given us a recipe for how to live our lives -- the Bible. It’s a very straightforward recipe and a very good one. But when we try to make it more than it is … when we try to make it say more than it says or create rules that aren’t really there … we just screw things up.
Like Cousin Tom and his volcano.
May your word and your word alone, O Lord, be the lamp unto our feet, and the light for our pathway.