By Tanya Pike
I love pie.
I could go on about why - how it's the perfect marriage of crispy crust and sweet insides, about how it reminds me of my gramma's house, about how I once won a pie baking contest - but I'll spare you. I'll just leave it that I. LOVE. PIE!
So, when invited to a family picnic at the lake for the Fourth of July and asked to bring the dessert, I opted to make peach and cherry hand pies. They are the ultimate pie in my humble opinion. . .twice the crust, half the filling and portable - so you can wander around the picnic area and hide the fact that you are now eating your third one! Try getting away with that dragging around a plate and fork!
The only problem is that hand pies are a pain in the ass. They take all day to make. Assemble the ingredients. Chill them for an hour. Form the dough. Chill for an hour. Roll and cut the circles. Chill for half an hour. Fill and seal the pies. Chill for half an hour. Bake for 40 minutes. Add that I had to make the recipe TWICE and I was lucky that they were finished by about 8:30 on Friday night.
After I collapsed on the couch, sick to death of fooling around with pie dough I heard a suspicious noise from the kitchen. Too tired to get up, I ignored it. To my peril I might add. A minute later I heard a quiet gulping noise. Dragging my sorry self up I looked in the kitchen and saw Oliver crouched behind the kitchen table quietly munching on something crispy. With rising consternation I counted the peach pies on the cooling rack. Where once eight small pies had rested, there were now only seven.
Of course it was too late. I let him finish it.
He came flying out from behind the table, butt waggling back and forth with pleasure and gave me a big kiss before jumping up on the couch, circling three times and collapsing in a heap. I was more than a little annoyed with him. I kept thinking about how much time and energy I had invested in making those pies and how I now only had 15 to take to the picnic instead of 16.
I stewed about it for awhile and texted a friend to relay my woe. He laughed. Made me laugh about it too. Then he gently reminded me that I had created those pies to be enjoyed.
Pow. Right between the eyes.
I looked over at Oliver who was next to me on the couch having fully succumbed to a pie induced coma. He was snoring peacefully with an occasional moan thrown in for good measure. I looked at his ribs which stick out because he's usually too busy to bother with eating. He had delighted in eating that pie. He was fully appreciative of his good fortune and was probably more thankful for his treat than anyone who ate one at the picnic would be.
Maybe that's the thing about creation. You might be the creator. . .but you don't get to control everything.
I've been thinking about this small lesson since Friday night. I wonder if I got a very small taste of what God felt after a full week of making the world. Everything was finally done. God might have finally sat down on the couch to take a breather thinking that the world was finally ready - waiting on the cosmic cooling rack if you will - when those silly, butt wagging humans made a bad choice. They ate the apple pie and then tried to hide out behind the kitchen table, hoping God wouldn't notice.
Wouldn't it have been easier if God hadn't given humans a choice in the first place? Why put the tree in the garden if we weren't meant to eat it?
In that same vein, wouldn't it have been easier if I had trained Oliver to not do anything he didn't have permission to do?
Quite possibly, on both accounts. But is that really a relationship? What kind of connection between Creator and Created would that be?
That's the story of the rest of the Bible I guess. Humans making our own choices and God doing everything possible to bring us back into relationship. We wander. God woos.
Oliver isn't my puppet. And I don't really think God is pulling my strings.
God created. God stepped back. God watched. God let go. God trusted that all would be well.
That's the lesson I need to work on.
Oh yeah. By the way? There were more than enough pies to go around. And left-overs for breakfast on Saturday too.
