The Real Thing

By Cheri Cowell

My mother’s favorite dessert is banana pudding. Now if the only banana pudding you’ve had is the kind made with vanilla pudding, you have not had real banana pudding. For my mother’s birthday I made the real kind of banana pudding: scalded milk, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla over a double broiler, layered with the bananas and wafers, topped with a meringue. It tastes nothing like the vanilla pudding version. Looks like it, but doesn’t taste like it. Real and sincere love is like that. The counterfeit version looks like it from a distance, but doesn’t measure up.
This passage follows the familiar “church is the body” passage. For the body to function as one unit we must be bound together, and love is that binding agent. When we love others with a sincere and real love we release the power of Christ as the head of that body. The head can then direct the body to move in ways it didn’t realize it could move. If we want to do great things for Christ, we must first begin by loving one another with brotherly and sisterly love.

PRAYER: Thank You, God, for Your love for me. I praise You today for being the head of the body and ask Your help in loving other members of the body of Christ with a sincere and real love that mirrors the Real Thing.

“Love must be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another.”  (Romans 12: 9-10 NET)

Today’s devotion is by Cheri Cowell. Cheri was chosen as one of six Christian journalists for an Israeli Ministry of Tourism sponsored tour of the Holy Land in November 2009. To learn more about Cheri’s ministry, visit her website www.CheriCowell.com