TOPPINGS

I've sold many chicken sandwiches in my time with Chick-fil-A and I've heard many different ways of ordering "the extras".  The Chick-fil-A sandwich comes with two pickles on a buttered bun, but you can add all kinds of "goodies" or "groceries" from lettuce and tomato to bacon and three different cheeses.  People have different preferences of what they like to "top it off" with; different ways to "throw clothes" on their chicken...and they have different ways of saying that they want their chicken "fully loaded".


Along with the phrases above that I've already shared, there are a whole lot more.  But the best one that I heard came from someone down at Camp Atterbury.  They ordered their sandwich and told me to "run it through the garden".  It kind of caught me off guard.  I had never heard it before and wasn't sure that I necessarily heard it correctly.  When I asked him to repeat himself and he did, I smiled.  That is a great way of saying it: "run it through the garden" (sad to say, I pictured a cartoon chicken sandwich running through a garden picking up all the toppings as she ran through).


And that got me thinking...how many of us view our relationship with the Lord like that?  How many of us think that we can "run through" a church and pick up Jesus?  It doesn't work that way. Just like a sandwich needs to be opened up so the toppings can be inserted inside the sandwich, we too need to be opened up and allow Jesus to be placed inside our hearts and lives.


Placing lettuce and tomato on a sandwich is much less time consuming.  It takes time to "load up" with Jesus.  When we're opened up for The Topping, sometimes there is no room because of the other choices we've made for our spiritual sandwich.  We need to rid ourselves of all those other things that are not pleasing to the Lord.


In reality, Jesus is not a "topping" for our spiritual sandwich; He should be the meat.  And His sandwich is so delicious that we don't need to--and shouldn't--add toppings.  Put on Christ.


"For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes."  -Galatians 3:26-27 (NLT)-