This week's Theme: Pot Luck Peril
Day 1: Death in the Pot
I looked at the long stalk of unknown greenery among my spinach leaves. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it was definitely not spinach! Or anything edible as far as I could tell. I added it to the growing pile of discards from my pick-through process. So much for triple-washed!
Long ago, I learned that it’s essential to thoroughly sort and wash all packaged greens and salads regardless how distant the expiration date, or how emphatic the “prewashed” claims. My current discard pile reinforced the need for vigilance. Especially perturbing are the growing instances of “foreign” plant species mixed in with edible greens!
The concern is not just with salads and other produce. Food safety recalls increasingly include a vast number of products contaminated with numerous types of foreign objects including plastics, metallics, and glass fragments. And while food safety recall data can be complicated and confusing, it is apparent that recalls are on the increase.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—the government agency with food safety oversight in the US—encourages awareness: It is important that consumers be aware of recalls because recalled foods may cause injury or illness (www.fda.gov).
Recently, when I typed the question into my Microsoft search bar, "Are there more recalls of food lately?" the answer came back, "Yes", citing various sources. In fact, the article assured me, the observation was not merely in my head!
As I absorb the recall data and the FDA advisories, and as I pick through my own evidence of foreign matter among my greens, I can't help thinking of an Old Testament incident simply entitled, Death In the Pot:
Elisha returned to Gilgal and there was a famine in that region. While the company of the prophets was meeting with him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and cook some stew for these prophets.”
One of them went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine and picked as many of its gourds as his garment could hold. When he returned, he cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were. The stew was poured out for the men, but as they began to eat it, they cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it (2 Kings 4:38-40).
I've often wondered what these men could possibly have been thinking! Obviously, misguided intentions, unwise decisions, and careless actions are not new. Neither is their impact on communal safety and well-being!
In a very real sense, though, Death in the Pot applies to more than just our natural food and physical safety. Everywhere around us, stew pots and bubbling cauldrons of stone soup brim with wild vines, careless gatherings and unknown gourds—a pinch of this, a scoop of that, a handful of the other.
But the God of the universe who gives [wisdom] generously to all without finding fault (James 1:5), offers in Scripture, awareness and protection against the careless enticements into injury, or illness, or simmering pots of death. The wisdom of the word warn us, The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps (Proverbs 14:15).
Here too, the data can be complicated and confusing. But Jesus provides the only fail-safe means of sorting through the dubious and deceptive packaged salads of the world, offering cleansing... by the washing with water through the word... (Ephesians 5:26). He alone defeated death (1 Corinthians 15:55-57), and by His grace, there remains nothing harmful in the pot (2 Kings 4:41).
