HEART THOUGHTS from Helen

"When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight. For I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty." Jeremiah 15:16

My momma's kitchen warms my memory as an oven warms to bake the fragrant bread that nourishes our bodies and souls. The amiability, the smells, the goodness, the comfort, the joy fills me as much as the Word of God fills my heart today when I read it. Not only did Mother provide food for the body but she regularly ladled out wisdom, and the joy of my childhood and adulthood. Coming home meant heading straight to Momma's kitchen. I'd sit at the bar and help Momma prepare myriads of meals. She would instruct me in life's challenges while we chopped, cut or sliced. I learned from her how to roll dough, cut biscuits and she'd let me taste the first piece of cornbread as it came from the oven. The hot crust was always the best part. I can see her as she turned from the yellow countertop to the stove hundreds of times.

Bread dough, salads, desserts, roast beef, squash, beans and 'norn '(corn) as the grandchildren called it, fed us physically while love and instruction from God's Word fed us spiritually.

Fragrant aromas from roasts cooked slowly in the Crockpot permeated the house. Momma liked to name the cows that Daddy raised for our personal beef supply. Our own private pigs also found their way into our freezer and homemade sausage stands out as a breakfast staple, along with grits and eggs. The squash, beans and corn from Daddy's garden compare to none. Cutting up squash, shelling beans and shucking corn came as natural to me as breathing. Whenever you sat down at Momma's in her old green rocker, you automatically picked up a basket of beans to shell. Any culinary skills that I acquired come from Momma's kitchen classroom seasoned with her practical and spiritual wisdom.

O Lord, no wonder your Words were found to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart and I ate them in my Momma's kitchen just as surely as I ate her food, drank in the warmth of her love and comfort and knowledge as she shared your faithfulness with me and mine. Thank you for feeding me from my Momma's hand food that satisfies and sanctifies. I rejoice in my memories of Your blessed provision in Momma's kitchen.

"Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your Word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart."