Expiration Dates

Every path that leads to heaven is trodden by willing feet. No one is ever driven to paradise.  Howard Crosby

My husband shared an article with me the other day from our local newspaper written by a journalist named Steve Blow.  This may or may not apply to you but it sure applied to us.  The two of us laughed over the article.  I admit it, Jerry and I are easily entertained.

Anyway, the article was talking about expiration dates on foods and how much food we throw away because of an expiration date printed on the container.  As he said sometimes the date on the outside of the container is not an expiration date but a sell by date.  So in reality you may have a few extra days left on that gallon of milk in the fridge.

I am of the mind that you can kill most germs in the microwave.  Just nuke it a few minutes.  I admit I have forgotten things in the fridge that would be better off not opened, but how can you tell until you open it unless it is in a clear container.  I am sort of a recycler of plastic food containers so sometimes my memory fails me about what I thought was important to save for a second meal. 

I love to cook but never seem to have the time anymore so my theory is don’t go near the kitchen or the fridge.  That is why bad things happen in my fridge. I put the leftover pizza wrapped in foil in there and forget about it for several days.  When I return to get something out, I start wondering what is wrapped in the foil.  I open it and there is the leftover pizza from last week that resembles an over large hockey puck with extra toppings. It gets even better when you have several people putting things in the fridge because it gives a whole new meaning to the term “mystery meat”.

Then there are the dressings and condiments in the door.  Every year or so I clean those out and throw the outdated ones away, but I wonder if it is just my paranoia over eating some dreaded bacteria that makes me throw out that old bottle of ketchup. Too many times I think we buy into what the manufacturers tell us because they don’t want to be liable for us eating something that makes us sick, plus they want us to buy more. What better way to do this than to tell us our old ketchup is no good anymore.  My theory is that if I left the ketchup in the fridge for over a year, it’s every man for himself.  Eat at your own risk. 

Then there are all the take-out food containers that accumulate.  We take the left-overs from the restaurant and decide to give them a new place to live, “in our refrigerator”.  So they take up residence and never leave until the next time you get hungry.  Then it’s like a scavenger hunt.  Do I open this container and find a shriveled up piece of bread and that stuck together chunk of pasta or the leftover salad that disintegrated.  I kind of like to think of the refrigerator like that old show “Let’s Make a Deal”.  You could choose between door number one or door number two.  Door number one could be a dud and door number two could be edible. 

If you think about it, we all have an expiration date too.  The thing is God doesn’t want us to expire before we make the choice to come to Him.  Every person in this world has an expiration date.  We all will expire from this world into another.  Where we choose to spend the next life is a choice.  None of us know when our time on earth will end but we do have the opportunity to live forever with no expiration date.  Have you accepted Christ’s invitation to the wedding banquet?          

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I will leave this earth one day for another home. I have the choice to live in eternity with You.  I also have the opportunity to show others the way home, but if I don’t tell others how to get to You, then I am not living the life You have called me to live. 

Scripture:  And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come.  Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.” ‘But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business.  And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them.  But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.  Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’  So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“For many are called, but few are chosen.”  Matthew 22:1-14