One of my favorite cookbooks is the More-with-Less Cookbook by Mennonite Doris Janzen Longacre. Traveling with me to West Africa and across the Middle East and North Africa, this book has provided recipes I could cook anywhere.
Thomas à Kempis sounds a lot like Longacre and the principles she sought in her life and cooking:
First, strive to do another’s will rather than your own. Second, choose always to have less than more. Third, seek the lower places in life, dying to the need to be recognized and important. Fourth, always and in everything desire that the will of God may be completely fulfilled in you. The person who tries this will be treading the frontiers of peace and rest.
Foster and Smith, ed. Devotional Classics. From Thomas à Kempis’ work The Imitation of Christ.
Living a life of purpose in Christ requires a new perspective on stuff, and this simple cookbook helped me to adjust my own many a time. A simple meal or plain cake offered in his name became a feast to a hungry soul.
Being satisfied with our daily bread also helps us to find satisfaction in our place in life. While the world seeks fame and glory, we seek to know Christ and him crucified. We lay aside our desires to serve his.
Paul told the believers in Philippi to…
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:3-5 (NIV)
In all this, we become more and more in line with the mind of Christ. Thomas à Kempis called this the way of peace and true liberty.
Have you found the way? Walk in it to his glory.
Grace and Peace