A Cookie-cutter Lifestyle

I love my mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies! If you guys remember the old TV show Rugrats, than you will remember Angelica. She was obsessed with cookies, so if i could compare myself to any nickelodeon cartoon character, it would be Angelica. I'm usually not around when my mom bakes the cookies, but I'm almost certain of the steps to cook them. You throw some ingredients together in a bowl, and then roll up the dough and put it on the cookie sheet. Let them cook in the oven for like 12 minutes and ta da, a sheet of awesomeness.

My mom doesn't use special cookie cutters to make pretty shapes out of the cookie dough. All she does is roll the dough up into a ball and cook them. I don't see any reason to make something look attractive before I devour it.Don't get me wrong. I don't hate cookies that have been cut into particular shapes for appeal. I actually like the idea. I think i am just to lazy to ever form my cookies in a particular shape (actually, I'm to lazy to even bake cookies, so I leave that to my mom).

But on a serious note...I thought about those Christmas tree-shaped cookies everyone eats on Christmas, and how before they were made, the cookie dough was pressed through a certain mold to reach a certain outcome. In this case, the mold was a cookie cutter and the outcome was a Tannenbaum. Jesus tells us that our lives need to go through a mold in order to reach the outcome Christ calls us to. This mold is no holiday symbol, but a cross. The outcome is a mature follower of Jesus. Mark 8:34 says, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The cross is no longer a symbol of our religion but a lifestyle.

I will be the first to admit that my life does not always follow the way of the cross. In fact, most of the time I decide to use the world as the pattern for my life. It's easier and usually benefits me. A lifestyle mimicking Jesus' path to the cross is not easy...it is difficult. Being shaped by the cross never benefits me...it benefits others and the kingdom. This lifestyle when correctly lived out results in death. But if I truly die to myself, I will receive life and I KNOW that eternal life is better than my momma's cookies!