Life Lessons from the Kitchen

During his general conference talk, Elder Dallin H. Oaks quoted Luke 22:31: "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." He went on to say that Satan wants us to be just like the rest of the world, but the Savior would have us be the salt of the earth (Matt 5:13).

I immediately thought of how I use sifting and salt in the kitchen. When baking a cake or special kinds of cookies (ok, most cookies, but I'm lazy so I usually skip this step), you sift the dry ingredients together before adding them to the wet ingredients. Sifting makes the ingredients more consistent in size and texture, so they blend in more smoothly. For cakes, that's a good thing. For people, especially covenant people who the Lord needs to stand up for truth and make a difference, becoming just like everyone else is a very bad thing. Of course it's tempting to blend in, but (to quote What a Girl Wants) "why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?" The Lord needs us to be a peculiar people so we can show the world a better way. Blending in does not serve His purposes. That doesn't mean we should go out of our way to be weird and different; it simply means not being ashamed to stand up for what we believe, and explaining why.

I remember when I first started baking I thought it was so strange that even dessert recipes had small amounts of salt in them. My mom explained that the salt doesn't keep a cookie from being sweet, but instead it brings out the best flavors in all of the other ingredients. Salt has a way of taking the best characteristics in the things around it, and bringing those traits to the surface. Also, in times before the fridge and freezer could keep meats fresh, people used salt as a preservative. No wonder the Lord wants His people to be like salt. If we all tried harder to look for the best in others, then enhance those best traits and bring them to the surface, and also do all we can to preserve the goodness in ourselves and others, the world would most definitely be a more savory - and also sweeter - place to live.

And on that excessively pun-filled note, I'm excited to go home and bake orange-vanilla cupcakes for Megan's 25th birthday. yum.