THE INCREDIBLE EDIBLE

This year for our evening study we are going through "Pilgrim's Progress" as a staff. So every Thursday night at 8:30 the staff (about 12 people) come over to the house. It has become the highlight of the week for me. I am from the school of thought that you should have food at such gatherings, but it isn't really practical to have dinner together- it's too late and they just finished dinner clean up before coming over. So every week I have the "incredible edible," a food item worth celebrating. The first week was a big bowl of assorted gummy candies- swedish fish, gummy worms, gummy bears, gummy dinosaurs, spice drops, etc... The next week was six different kinds of pudding (I still contend that pudding is better than ice cream.) The identity of the incredible edible is kept a secret all week and then is finally unveiled at the beginning of the study.
This week was crayfish with melted butter and lemon wedges. I was a little nervous at first because as they filed in they all agreed that our house was stinky. Nathanael Peck pronounced "It smells kind of like cat food," and his sister Rachel said "It smells like that fish stuff that father puts on the garden to make it grow better." Sleepy Bowden came downstairs still rubbing his eyes, and when I asked him why he was out of bed he stated flatly, "Our house stinks."

About half of them tried it and all who tried it said that they really liked them. We polished off all 50 of them in under ten minutes. I love crayfish... it is truly an incredible edible.

The study went well too. This week we covered chapter 3 wherein Christian drops his burden at the foot of the cross and makes his way up the hill of difficulty and arrives at the House Beautiful. Along the way he had many experiences and met many other travelers which led to great discussion. As usual I talked too much, but I think Pilgrim's Progress is a great book for group study. I do part company with Bunyan on the issue of eternal security though. His view that a believer can lose his/her salvation colors the whole book up to this point, but even that has led to some good back and forth within the staff. It is definitely an issue worth wrestling with.