The Cookie Mystery - Hebrews 3:1

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,,,,, oh wait that isn't the right story.  A long time ago when our kids were pretty young, maybe 8 and 6 years old, we lived in a modest and comfortable home in a little Iowa country town by the name of Gilbertville.  The kids had friends all over the neighborhood (and some enemies) and Darla and I were doing what we could to be lights and witnesses to our neighbors and to people in the town.

During that time I worked mostly the night shift because it allowed for one of us (Darla or I) to be home with the kids most of the time. The short time we didn't overlap Darla's mom covered for us with the kids. Life seemed to be a struggle back then but looking at it from here it seems so very much simpler and so very much more focused and fulfilling. Some of that I am sure is because we were so much younger and could burn the candles on both ends and in the middle occasionally.  Not so much any more. I get grumpy if anyone comes near my candle with a match.

I can recall one afternoon in that little house I was sitting in this purple swivel rocker that our folks had given us to furnish our castle. It was a good Bible Study chair though. I spent a lot of hours in that chair with Thompson Chain and Strong's Concordance searching out the scriptures. It was a common place for my kids to see me and a common way for me to spend the time I had before going to work in the evening.  On that particular afternoon I was reading in Hebrews and this first verse of the 3rd chapter stopped me to investigate.  I pulled up the Strong's definition of the word CONSIDER. It meant to perceive, remark, observe, understand. To consider attentively, fix ones eye or mind on.  This really had me thinking.  Consider,,, Jesus Christ.

I pondered this idea of fixing my mind and eye on Jesus and felt that feeling that you get when you are sure that you have found something of value. You are turning it over and over in your mind observing it hoping that the value with burst forth.  Well just then our oldest son Aaron burst forth into the kitchen and into my considering.

It was a warm day and he had been out playing and he asked me for a cookie.  Just few lines here about cookies.  See in our house back in those days a package of cookies would last maybe an hour or two if we were lucky.  The kids ( and us) had pretty active sweet tooth's so if we didn't let rationality prevail, well we would either go broke buying cookies or never have any cookies.  So being the crafty parents that we were, we started hiding the cookies to prolong their existence in the house.  So before I would get Aaron a cookie I sent him to his room so that I could go to the secret safe in the wall and get him two cookies.

We were and still are BIG fans of the fudge covered graham cracker.  Great with or without milk.  A revolutionary cookie in my opinion. So with the cookie monster in his room safely away from the stash I got him two cookies, went back to my chair and called him out to get his snack.  He came out got the cookies and sat on the floor listening to the radio or a tape or whatever it was that I had as background noise. I returned to my consideration of the word consider.

It wasn't very long, maybe 10 minutes that my son turned to me with one bite of cookie left and said, " The cookies are in the fridge". "How do you know that I asked?" Aaron popped the last bite in his mouth and as he hopped up to resume his playing outside he said, "because the cookies were cold".  I was dumbfounded. It was at this moment that the Holy Ghost nudged me and said, thats what it means to consider something.

Aaron had sat there with two cookies in his hands, savoring the taste and thinking about cookies. The only thing better that 2 cookies afterall would be 3 or more cookies. He had fixed his eyes, his mind, his feelings on the cookies that he was enjoying and wanted to enjoy more and with that consideration came the understanding that the cookies were in the fridge.  He was right. We kept them in the crisper, well not after that we didnt but that isnt the point.

The point was that his desire for the cookies, focused his attention and his thinking until the object of his affection became clear in his mind. Hebrews 12:2 says "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith". That word LOOKING means to turn the eyes away from other things and fix them on something. Jude 1:21 instructs us to Keep ourselves, Looking for the Mercy of our Lord Jesus unto eternal life.

This probably doesn't seem as profound to you the reader as it did and does to me.  I was instructed in an eternal truth by an 8 year old eating cookies on the living room floor.  And when he told me the cookies were in the fridge, because they were cold,  well it was made quite clear the kind of concentration that the scripture was teaching in Hebrews 3:1.  The mystery of the scripture was revealed to me in the solving of the mystery of the cookies.