The Theology of Cold Butter

 

When I was a kid, I thought my mother and grandmother were magicians. Their wand wasn’t a slender stick of wood, but a strange, D-shaped tool with a wooden handle and rigid metal blades. The pastry blender.

I remember watching them use it, but the true nature of the magic didn't hit me until I grew up and held the tool myself. It broke my brain that this simple hand instrument, which looked more suited for mashing potatoes or scraping paint, could do something so delicate. I watched in awe as I forced it through the mixture, seeing the hard, cold block of butter disappear into the flour until it vanished into coarse crumbs. It could cream butter and sugar until it was light as air. It was alchemy.

Growing up in the era of "heart-smart" cookbooks and margarine, where photocopied recipes promised health through the elimination of yolks, this tool felt like a rebellion. It belonged to an older world. When I eventually moved out and tried to buy my own, I was disappointed to find only flimsy wire versions that bent against the cold butter. They didn't have the backbone of the old ones. They didn't have the rigid blades that demanded a little force, a little intention.

I finally found a good one—an OXO with that requisite stiffness—but using it now feels different. It brings the weight of memory.

I often find myself wishing I had paid closer attention to my grandmother. She was one of the greats, wielding her specialties like superpowers: the amazing cinnamon rolls (sticky pecan rolls, really) she made for breakfast, or the German Chocolate Cake she always made for my birthday. I wish I had stood at the counter longer, asked more questions, and appreciated the master class I was attending for free.

I realize this most when it comes to pie crust. I’m not even much of a pie fan, but I now recognize the sheer sorcery she possessed in making a perfect crust. I see how much people struggle with it today—fighting the hydration, the temperature, the toughness—while hers were always perfect. She never explicitly taught me to make them, yet somehow, the few times I have tried, I have come pretty close to her level of mastery.

I guess that is the general transfer of skills in the kitchen. It wasn't just about a specific recipe; it was an attention to detail imparted through the generations. It was learning the feel of the dough before you ever learned the measurements.

But the most vital transfer wasn't culinary; it was spiritual. Grandma never preached at me. We never had deep theological discussions—I wish we had—and as a kid, her faith wasn't something I thought much about. But it was there. It was as permanent a fixture as the Bible that always sat by her chair in the living room. She never missed a Sunday. Her faith wasn't loud, but it was consistent.

I remember living on my own in my early 20s, trying to figure out life and often feeling lost. Yet, even in that distance, I could feel the weight of her prayers. I am confident that I am walking with God today because Grandma prayed. She didn't need to be loud; she just needed to be faithful.

This was the "sincere faith" Paul wrote to Timothy about—a faith that dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, then his mother Eunice, and finally in him.

For me, that faith looks like waffles on a Sunday morning. It looks like refusing to melt the butter because cutting it in creates those perfect, crispy pockets. It looks like the quiet consistency of a Bible by a chair.

I may have missed asking some questions, but the wisdom didn't skip a generation. It’s right here in my hand, rigid blades and all, waiting to feed the people I love.

The Worst Hide and Seek Player

 Why we struggle to find a God who refuses to hide.

There is a simple, somewhat humorous truth about the nature of God that we often overlook: God is terrible at hide and seek.

In the childhood game, the goal is to conceal yourself, to become small, to blend in, and to stay silent until the seeker gives up. But God does the opposite. He refuses to hide. He fills all of creation with His handiwork; He speaks through history, scripture, and conscience. He is not crouching behind a bush hoping to go unnoticed; He is standing in plain sight, waiting to be seen.

The problem with this game of spiritual hide and seek isn’t the Hider. The problem is us—the seekers. We are bad at hide and seek not because the target is elusive, but because we often choose not to seek.

The Myth of the Hidden God We often complain that God is hard to find. We speak of "divine silence" or the "hiddenness of God" as if He is deliberately keeping us at arm's length. But the Bible suggests that if we aren’t finding Him, the issue lies in our method of searching, not His location.

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."

— Jeremiah 29:13 (NASB)

The condition for finding God isn't solving a puzzle; it is wholeheartedness. If God refuses to hide, then our inability to see Him usually stems from the fact that we are distracted. We are like a seeker standing in the middle of a room with our hands over our eyes, complaining that the room is empty.

Consider the prophet Elisha. When his servant was terrified by an enemy army surrounding them, Elisha didn't ask God to send a new army to save them. He simply asked God to reveal what was already there.

"Then Elisha prayed and said, 'O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.' And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

— 2 Kings 6:17 (NASB)

God was there the whole time. The protection was real. The only variable was whether the servant’s eyes were open or closed.

The Comfort of the Dream So why do we keep our eyes closed? Why do we live as if the spiritual world—the "real" reality—doesn't exist?

The truth is, we are spiritually asleep. We are like patients coming out of anesthesia—groggy, comfortable, and resistant to the harsh light of the operating room. As a friend once told me after surgery: "The key to waking up is opening your eyes."

It sounds simple, but it is profound. We stay asleep because the physical world feels solid, permanent, and safe. It is a vivid dream that demands our attention with bills, entertainment, and immediate desires. But scripture warns us that this physical world is actually the temporary vapor, and the invisible spiritual world is the concrete reality.

"while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

— 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NASB)

When we choose to focus only on what we can see physically, we are choosing to live in the dream. And that dream can be dangerous.

The House is on Fire There is a terrifying downside to hitting the spiritual snooze button. We often mistake comfort for safety. We feel the warmth of our surroundings—our routine, our possessions, our lack of conflict—and we think everything is fine. We pull the covers up tighter, content to stay asleep.

But sometimes, the bed is warm only because the house is on fire.

We are drifting in a burning building, soothed by the heat of our own destruction. We are spiritually unaware that our eternity hangs in the balance while we obsess over temporary things. God isn't hiding; He is the one sounding the alarm. He is the one shouting for us to wake up before the temporary collapses and we are left unprepared for the eternal.

"Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed."

— Romans 13:11 (NASB)

Waking Up We cannot hide from God. As Hebrews 4:13 (NASB) reminds us, "there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him." He knows exactly where we are. The game is rigged in our favor, yet we continue to lose because we refuse to open our eyes.

It is time to stop playing games. The reality we cling to is passing away. The "real" reality is here, right in front of us, impossible to miss if we would just look. We need to wake up from the dream before the house burns down around us.

Open your eyes. He is right there.

God's Severe Mercy

 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

— Psalm 23 (NASB)

We often read "green pastures" and imagine a vacation brochure—a gentle invitation to relax. But the text uses a specific Hebrew phrasing for "makes me lie down." It implies necessary intervention. In the world of animal husbandry, sheep are notoriously high-strung. It is almost impossible to get them to lie down. They can be exhausted, stumbling with fatigue, but they will still stand and pace if everything isn't perfect. They need to feel safe from predators, free from friction with other sheep, clear of pests, and their bellies must be full. If one thing is off, they will not rest.

Because sheep are rarely smart enough to find this equilibrium on their own, the Shepherd often has to curate the environment for them. And sometimes, when the sheep is particularly stubborn—or perhaps just driven by a misguided sense of duty—the Shepherd has to physically intervene.

In 2019, right near the beginning of the pandemic, my wife Gina and I both clearly heard God tell us that He was bringing us into a "season of rest." I heard the word, but I didn't listen to the intent. I was a man in motion. I was serving heavily in the church, carrying the weight of the youth ministry—making sure the Word was brought on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening. I was working at the USGS. I was trying to meet the needs of my family. I was so busy pouring out for everyone else that my own hobbies—the woodshop, the things that usually ground me—sat gathering dust. I assumed "rest" meant a spiritual deep breath, or maybe a lighter schedule. I didn't realize it was an eviction notice from my normal life.

It started on a Sunday night. My son Arch and I both fell ill. By Tuesday, we went for testing. Arch tested positive for COVID—he was legitimately sick—but I tested negative. Because of his diagnosis, the whole house was locked down for quarantine. We assumed my test was a false negative and that the virus was just working its way through me. But the pain wasn't respiratory; it was gut-wrenching. I spent the night moaning in agony until Gina finally made the call. At 6:00 AM the next morning, she drove me to the emergency room.

This is where the reality of the pandemic protocols hit us. She pulled up to the curb, but she wasn't allowed to get out. She couldn't walk me in. She couldn't advocate for me. She had to watch her husband, who was doubled over in pain, shuffle through the automatic doors alone. As she drove away, she had no idea what was happening inside. A terrifying thought nagged at the back of her mind: Is this the last time I’m going to see him alive?

Inside, the diagnosis was immediate. It wasn't COVID. My appendix had ruptured, likely three days prior. My body was septic. They rushed me into surgery, and suddenly, the lights went out.

I spent the next three weeks in that hospital. No visitors. No family. Just nurses checking vitals and bringing food. And then, once I was released, the family passed COVID around to the degree that we spent four months in total quarantine. God had prescribed rest, and then He made it happen.

Looking back, I realize why He had to be so drastic. I was that sheep who refused to lie down. I realized that the four things that keep a sheep awake were the very things driving my life in 2019, and God had to systematically remove them.

I couldn't rest because of Fear. Like a sheep worried about the wolf in the shadows, I carried a constant, low-level anxiety about managing the future. What if things fall apart? What if I’m not there to fix it? By placing me in a hospital bed where I physically couldn't protect my wife or care for my sick son, God forced me to realize that He was the Shepherd, not me. He removed my ability to be the sentry so I could finally sleep.

I couldn't rest because of Friction. In a flock, this is often about dominance, but for me, it was the friction of obligation. It was the constant rubbing of competing needs—the youth group, the job, the family. I felt the weight of being the provider, the teacher, the one who made sure everyone else was spiritually fed. I was so busy feeding the flock that I was starving myself. In that hospital room, the demands ceased. The youth group went on without me. The work waited. The friction of being "essential" was removed, and I realized the world turns just fine without my hand on the wheel.

I couldn't rest because of Pests. These were the daily annoyances, the to-do lists, the constant buzzing of responsibilities that kept my head twitching. In the hospital, those were stripped away. I didn't have to fix the cars that broke down while I was gone. I didn't have to mow the lawn. The Shepherd applied the oil of isolation to keep the flies away.

And finally, Hunger. I had been hungry for completion, trying to satisfy myself by finishing every task and meeting every need. But in that bed, unable to do anything, I found I was still sustained.

From the outside, 2019 looked like a disaster for our family. But honestly? Aside from the hospital food, it was the best vacation I have ever had. I experienced a supernatural peace that surpasses all comprehension. The burden of being the Provider was crushed under the weight of the circumstance, and all that was left was a son, finally lying down in the green pasture, totally dependent on the Shepherd to keep the world spinning.

He made me lie down. It wasn't a punishment; it was a rescue. He broke my self-reliance to save my sonship.

The Wall Phone and the Written Heart

 816-397-26XX.

That sequence of numbers is etched into the gray matter of my brain (I x'd out the last two numbers for privacy), deeper than my social security number or my wedding anniversary. It was my childhood landline. Of course, back then, we didn’t call it a "landline." It was just the phone. The concept of a number that wasn't physically tethered to a specific wall in a specific house didn't exist.

I don’t know when my parents finally disconnected that line, but the memory of it is visceral. I can still see the phone hanging on the wall at the bottom of the stairs in our basement. It was a rotary phone, meaning every call required patience and precision. If you messed up the spin on the last digit, you hung up and started over.

If you wanted a private conversation, you didn’t walk into your bedroom or go outside. You sat on the mismatched patchwork carpet of the stairs, curling your body to accommodate the five-foot radius of the curly cord. That cord was your leash, and that spot on the stairs was your world.

There was an etiquette to it. You didn’t have Caller ID to screen your interactions; if the phone rang, you answered it, stepping into the unknown. We carried dozens of phone numbers in our heads because we had to. We knew the numbers of our best friends, our grandparents, the local pizza place.

Somewhere along the way, we traded that internal storage for external convenience. I have long since lost the ability to hold a Rolodex in my mind. I rely entirely on my smartphone to be my memory. My wife, Gina, is the outlier—she still manually types in numbers, a stubborn holdout of muscle memory in a digital world. But for the rest of us, if the device is lost, the connection is lost.

And while I love the convenience, I can’t help but wonder if we are paying a hidden cost. By making information effortless, do we risk a kind of spiritual atrophy?

The Evolution of Memory

Throughout history, the way we handle information has shifted. In Biblical times, scripture was primarily shared by oral tradition. Jewish children were expected to commit vast portions of the Torah to memory. This wasn't just devotion; it was necessity. At that time, literacy was often a status symbol, a skill reserved for the wealthy or the elite. You couldn't just pop down to the market and buy a scroll; if you wanted to possess the Word, you had to carry it inside you.

Then came the printing press, the great leveler. It democratized knowledge, making the written word accessible to the masses. We moved from the oral tradition to the written page.

And now, we have moved to the digital screen. Today, we have access to more theological data than any generation in history. I can pull up any Bible verse in any translation, cross-reference it with the original Greek or Hebrew, and read ten commentaries on it—all within seconds.

But this ease of access masks a potential danger.

There is a distinct difference between knowing the truth and knowing where to find the truth. It is the difference between knowing where someone lives and actually knowing the person. You can have someone’s address stored in your GPS, but that doesn’t mean you are welcome at their dinner table.

The Storage Problem

The Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:11 (NASB), "Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You."

He doesn’t say, "Your word I have written on a scroll and stored on a shelf in case I need to reference it later." He says he has treasured it in his heart. The Hebrew idea here implies hiding it away, storing it up like a supply for a siege.

When we outsource our memory to our devices, we stop doing the hard work of "treasuring." We risk relying on the search bar rather than the Spirit. But truth that is merely accessible isn't the same as truth that is internalized.

• Internalized truth is there when the crisis hits and you don't have time to look up a verse.

• Internalized truth shapes your subconscious reactions and your character.

• Internalized truth is the "Sword of the Spirit" ready in your hand, not a sword left in the scabbard back at the library.

We have gained the whole world of information, but we must be careful not to lose the soul of knowledge. We know about God because the data is at our fingertips, but do we know God?

Choosing the Friction

To be honest, I don’t miss that rotary phone. I don’t miss sitting on the basement stairs, and I certainly don’t miss the anxiety of answering a call not knowing who was on the other end. I love that I have the world in my pocket.

But I do miss what that friction produced.

The effort required to memorize a number meant that the number became part of me. The friction created retention. In our spiritual lives, the friction has been removed. We don't have to memorize scripture to find it. We don't have to meditate on a passage to understand it; we can just read a blog post about it.

Perhaps we need to intentionally re-introduce some friction into our walk with God. Maybe we need to stop being satisfied with having the Bible in our pockets and start doing the hard work of getting it back into our bloodstreams. The internet is a wonderful library, but it makes for a terrible heart.

Let us not be a generation that just knows how to search for the Master, but one that knows His voice.

The Only Thing That Wasn't Good

I’ve been wrestling lately with a question that seems simple on the surface but gets deeper the more you pull at the thread: Why did God create us?

It’s easy to say "for His glory," and that’s true, but it can feel abstract. I’ve tried to dig into Scripture to find the root of it—something I can pin down. I don’t believe God created us because He was lonely; God is self-sufficient. He doesn't need anything. But looking at the narrative of creation, I’ve become convinced that while He didn’t create us out of need, He absolutely created us for relationship.

The logic starts before humanity even takes a breath. In Genesis 1:26 (NASB), God says, "Let Us make mankind in Our image." Right there, in the very first mention of our design, we see community. God is speaking within the Trinity. He is relationship. So, if we are made in His image, we are made for relationship too.

This becomes the "proof in the pudding" when we get to Genesis 2. God creates a perfect world. He creates light, land, seas, and animals, and after each one, He declares it "good." But then, He looks at Adam—who is sinless, perfect, and in paradise—and says the opposite.

"It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18, NASB).

That stops me in my tracks every time. The only thing in a perfect universe that God labeled "not good" was solitude. Why? Because a solitary man cannot fully reflect a relational God.

To fix this, God didn’t create a servant for Adam; He created a partner. He made a relationship. This mirrors why God created us in the first place. Ephesians 1:5 tells us He "predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself." He wasn’t looking for employees to manage the garden; He was looking for a family to share it with. We see this in Genesis 3:8, where God is "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," seeking them out. He wanted the walk, not just the worship.

The Cost of the Walk

Tragically, Adam and Eve traded that intimacy for information. They wanted the autonomy of "knowing" good and evil rather than the safety of trusting God. They broke the relationship to gain control.

But this is where the logic of "Relationship" hits me the hardest. If the relationship was cheap, God would have just started over. Instead, He paid an infinite price to restore it. On the cross, Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46, NASB).

Jesus experienced the ultimate "not good"—total separation from the Father—so that we never have to. He took the isolation so we could have the adoption.

The Horizontal Proof

This restoration isn’t just about me and God, though. If we are restored to the image of a Triune God, that restoration must spill over into how we treat people. We cannot claim to have a "vertical" relationship with God while ignoring the "horizontal" relationship with others. As 1 John 4:20 (NASB) puts it, "for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."

We need relationship with God because that is what we were created for, and we need relationship with each other because we were created in His image.

Co-Laboring

This even changes how I view my work. Adam wasn’t just given a wife; they were given a garden to tend together. Relationship grows through shared purpose. We aren't just God's children sitting around; we are His "fellow workers" (1 Corinthians 3:9). We experience this relationship most deeply not just when we are singing to Him, but when we are working with Him.

The Conclusion

This train of thought leads me to a sobering realization about eternity. If we were created for relationship, then "Eternal Life" isn't just living forever—it is the restoration of that relationship. As Jesus said in John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You."

Conversely, Hell isn’t just fire and brimstone; it is the total, finalized removal of that relationship. It is being "away from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). It is the ultimate realization of "it is not good for man to be alone," stretched out for eternity.

The logic holds up: We were designed by a relational God, for a relationship with Him and with each other. When we try to walk alone—whether in life or in our spiritual walk—we aren’t just being independent. We are returning to the only state God ever called "not good."

We were made for the walk.