Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: POUND (07/15/21)
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TITLE: Questioning My Diet | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
07/16/21 -
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I like the sixteen-ounce tenderloin. I like to pound the pound. Tenderize the tenderloin. I like the metallic smell of raw organic beef reminding me of the days growing up on the farm where grandpa used to butcher his own meat. I never figured out why we pound the meat but grandpa did it so I do it.
While I’m grilling it just right, I hear my grandma’s voice. “Sixteen ounces of steak is about a thousand calories and a pound of fat is thirty-five hundred calories so you’ll be gaining about a third of a pound.” I love that thinking. I eat a pound and gain a third of that.
My son, the budding preacher, asked me last week. “How much steak do you think Jesus ate?”
I’d never thought of that before. I know he ate fish and bread. I know he ate lamb at the Passover feast. I’m sure he must have eaten chicken. Doesn’t everyone?
Have you ever had those questions that pound into your brain like a jack-hammer? What kind of a question is that? “How much steak did Jesus eat?”
I used my fatherly powers to set him straight. “This sounds like a good research project for a bright future pastor like you. If you look in the books of Moses, you’ll see that the priests always got hunks of the sacrificial meat offered. You know Jesus was a priest so, of course, he should get his share.”
“So, what was his share?”
“The important point,” I pontificate, “is that the New Testament says we’re all priests so it’s right that we sacrifice and get our share. Besides, you know how I’m always asking you about what would Jesus do? He would make sure that whatever he was eating that there would be enough to fill everyone up.”
“Am I going to regret knowing you when I grow up?” he asks.
My five-year-old stepped into the conversation as I added a few extra whacks of pounding on the flattened beef. “Does that hurt the cow?” she asks.
I lay down the mallet. “No, honey, of course not. Nothing hurts the cow, now. You see, the cow has gone to heaven and is happy that we’re happy?”
“Did you pound grandpa with a hammer when he went to heaven?”
Where do they find these kids? “No, we don’t pound people,” I say.
“Does God pound people?” she asks.
“Not like this, honey!” I say. “God loves us and wants to share his forever home with us. That’s why Jesus died for us.”
“Did God pound Jesus when he died?” she asks.
How do you answer that one? “In some ways, God let Jesus be pounded. Bad people pounded nails into his hands and feet so that he died. God let that happen so that we could be in his family and enjoy his forever home.”
“And the cows,” she added.
“The cows?”
“Yes, the cows that you said are happy in heaven while we pound them down here. Jesus and the cows are happy together waiting for us.”
My ten-year-old raised his eyebrows and shook his head slowly. “I don’t think you’d make a very good pastor, dad,” he said. “Our Sunday School teacher has never told us about happy cows in heaven.”
I washed my hands, abandoned the steak and retrieved a Bible. “Look here,” I said, opening to Isaiah eleven. “The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. Now, if you were that cow in heaven wouldn’t you be happy?”
He read it over several times, frowning as he did. “Are you sure this is about heaven?”
I flipped to Isaiah sixty-five, twenty-five. “Read that! It’s about the new heavens and the new earth.”
“The lion will eat straw like the ox.” He closed the Bible, nodding. “Wait until I tell my Sunday School teacher. Maybe she can pound some sense into Big Billy.”
Eating steak was never this hard when I was young.
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Do you really pound steak before grilling it?
I wondered what we would be eating at the weddings upper, once and read that nothings shall hurt or destroy in God's kingdom. I thought, Lord, You have meat to eat that we know not of," because it appears that no animal will die so that I can have a steak.
I enjoyed your entry very much.