Chocolate Strawberries

So getting ready for New Year’s Eve, as I did two other times during the holidays, I made Chocolate Covered Strawberries. This is an excellent healthful dessert since it’s mainly strawberry that you’re eating. Though definitely not a 15 minute meal, I did discover a shortcut to have the strawberries ready in 15 minutes for dipping. Then once dipped, they can be ready in about 15 minutes to serve.

Usually you have to rinse the strawberries and let them dry (while rotating so they don’t get a mushy spot). This can be time consuming, especially turning them. My shortcut is to get a little fan, set parchment paper on your counter, and as soon as you rinse your strawberries, set them slightly apart and turn the fan on. Within 15 minutes a quart of strawberries is dry, with no mushy spots, and ready to be deliciously dunked in chocolate that you’ve melted on the stove top while waiting.

While you’re dunking the delicacies, leave the fan on and place the strawberries back on the parchment for setting. No need to try and make room in your frig or move them around while setting. The fan dries them quickly and you’re off to your party.

As is my custom (as my children tell me), I can make a moral lesson out of anything. After all, isn’t that what a mom does? So as I sat looking at these berry beauties I thought to myself, if I didn’t stir or rotate them they’d get mushy spots, become unusable, and not complete the mission for which they were purposed. If God doesn’t stir us up or rotate us out of our comfort zone, we can get a little mushy, a little less useful, and not be ready to complete the mission in which we were purposed.

As we start this new year, we all have areas that need to be stirred up or rotated out of the rut. Ask the Lord, “In what areas of my walk with You have I become ‘mushy’ or ‘less useful’?”

2 Timothy 1:6 talks about stirring up the gift of God. One commentator actually states that he must stir it up; otherwise it would decay.

How does one get stirred or rotated? By prayer and by reading the Word, the Bible. How about starting a reading plan? What other goal could be more profitable than that for the new year?