Pumpkin Cupcakes

You never really know what you're going to take away from church when you go, do you?

Five02 is Rachel and my home church community. It's a fledgling community, being launched from within St. Marks UMC and only in its third actual week (after many months of planning and years of prayerful development). It's set up as a post-protestant (the term I like, others might call it post-modern) community, and the teaching is followed by discussion, which usually lends itself to a greater amount of knowledge, at least on my part. Something about hearing from other people and getting their POVs really drives it home for me, I guess.

Anyways, before each community worship gathering, we share a meal. It's a bring-whatever-you-have-in-your-cupboards potluck style meal. Ryan and Andrea typically make some kind of caserole (last week was super yummy apple-sausage-sweet potato), and others fill in with all kinds of deserts, soups, and whatnot. Tonight was almost completely filled with out-and-out dinners. There was a vegetable-ground beef-tater tot caserole, a lasagne, chili, chicken and bean soup ... and these amazing Pumpkin Cupcakes.

And, as we sat around the tables eating our meal, one-by-one it seemed that all of us tried a Pumpkin Cupcake and marveled at how good they were. They were light, but still filling, sweet but not overpowering, deserty enough to satisfy a sweet tooth, but still plain enough to compliment a meal.

So why do I bring this up?

Partially, because of tonight's teaching. We're going through the Lord's Prayer in our worship gatherings, and tonight we focused on "Your Kingdom Come" ... a simple, but loaded question. Ryan chose to focus on the word "Kingdom" and talk about what the Kingdom of God is, and how Jesus used parables to explain it to us.

Through it all, I came to realize that the Kingdom of God is more about restoration than reward. The Kingdom of God is where we are restored to what God's original plan was. That means we go away from the secular and into the spiritual. Our lives become completely Christ-centric. Everything we do is spiritual ... there are no lines between our "Christian" lives and the rest of us.

So, the Cupcakes, to me, brought this point home as I reflected later. How God-like is it to take something simple, add just a little bit of flare to it, and use it for glory? How many times has God done this? He took a sheppard boy, and turned him into a king. He took a fisherman, and turned him into a leader. He took a persecutor of the Church and turned him into a preacher most of us quote today.

And so what do we have? A basic box of yellow food cake, added to it 15 oz of pumpkin, a quarter cup of water and a quarter teaspoon of pumpkin spice.

And it's that simple.

And the way God wants to restore us, to allow His Kingdom to come ... are probably that simple, taken one step at a time.

And I think I'll pray "God, restore me in a simple step this day, so I may take another step towards Your Kingdom coming."

Amen.