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Baking Conversations of Grace

September 23, 2020·Carmen Quevedo

Have you ever had that experience where you messed up your baking measurements? You know, you added half a tablespoon when it was supposed to be half a teaspoon.  Or you failed to add the baking soda, and the consequence was an unrecognizable texture or consistency. Recipes and ratios matter.

Colossians 4:6 tells us, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Notice that it doesn’t say, full of salt and seasoned with grace. There are ratios that serve us well, whether we are baking a cake or having a simple conversation. There are building blocks in baking: a starch, a sweetener, a binder, and just enough salt to enhance the flavor of the other ingredients.

That’s right, salt. In the right ratio, salt has just enough bitterness to bring out the flavor of your main ingredients, sweet or savory. But if we accidently reverse the ratios of a sugar and salt in, say, a chocolate cake? Yeah, I don’t want to eat that either!

But here’s the thing, the same is true in our speech. Paul encourages us in Colossians to allow our speech to be full ofgrace and seasoned with salt. Now if I’m honest, I know my natural speech recipe, at times, is probably more full of salt and seasoned with grace. What’s the result? Potentially a sharp flavor that isn’t exactly palatable.

I don’t know about you, but I want to get my speech ratios right. I want my speech to be full of grace, seasoned with just enough salt to enhance the flavor without leaving a bitter taste for those around me. What a simple thought. Today, let’s bake conversations full of grace.

Pastor Carmen Quevedo

The Church on the Way