Pudding and Jesus
by Katie Harding on August 8, 2022
As a busy mom and active church leader in my 30s, I can remember my heart being warmed every time the scripture was read in service. And I would think to myself, “This week I’m going to read my Bible.” Yet as we walked through the door into our home, I would place my Bible on a catch-all shelf, and there it would stay until we left for church the following week.
As much as I wanted to follow Jesus, my life didn’t exactly align with His. I could be manipulative, demanding, and incredibly judgmental. Gentleness was not always my go-to reaction. A friend even said, “Don’t be fooled by Katie, there’s a tiger in her tank,” and I took it as a compliment! But about six months after I turned 40, my life really began to change. It was then I started meeting with Jesus every day, poring over the scriptures, learning from Him how to live like Him.
Around that same time, I was co-teaching a class of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in Sunday School. One week, we tried to illustrate the importance of reading their Bibles with the following activity, which soon became one of my favorites.
After dividing the children up into four groups, we gave each team a box of pudding (that had masking tape covering the printed directions) and an index card on which to write their own directions for making pudding. Once they finished, we gathered around a table and started creating the pudding dishes according to their exact recipes.
The first group said: Put the box in the bowl, pour a little bit of milk in, and then beat it. So, I did. I dropped the unopened box right into the bowl, poured a little bit of milk on top of the box, and then beat the heck out of the box with the back of my spoon. I can still remember the children yelling, “Nooooo.”
The next group directed us to: Open the box and put the pudding in the bowl, then add a little milk, and stir. So, I opened the box, put the package of pudding into the bowl, added a little milk, and stirred. Again, the children yelled, “Nooooo.”
The third group wrote: Pour the pudding into the bowl, add some milk, then stir. We were getting closer, but still the contents looked more like mud than pudding.
The last one was spot on: Open the box and pour the pudding from the package into the bowl. Add 2 cups of milk, and then stir until it gets thick. I figured there must have been someone in that last group who made a lot of pudding at home, because they knew the recipe exactly.
After finishing the activity, we told the children, “When we don’t spend time reading our Bibles, it’s easy to think we know the directions on how to follow Jesus. The only problem is without reading our Bibles to understand exactly how Jesus lived, our lives may resemble the first three bowls of pudding, instead of the last. If we want our pudding to look like pudding, then we need to know the directions. And if we want our lives to look like Jesus, then we need to know His directions as well, and we learn them by reading our Bibles.”
As followers of Jesus — apprentices of Christ — if we want to learn from Him how to live like Him, then we need to make sure we spend time reading our Bibles, too. And I pray you will discover for yourself the truth I have learned. You can’t sit at the feet of Jesus every day and not be changed. God bless.