My husband was rooting around in the freezer. I was pretty sure he wasn’t searching for broccoli or beans and I was right. “Do we have any ‘Bob’s chocolate chip cookies in here?” came a muffled query. (‘Bob’s Chocolate Chippers,” for the uninitiated, are those deemed too dark for consumption, per his middle daughter; not burnt, mind you – just more brown than she likes them.) Since the answer was no, I decided Saturday afternoon might be a good time to fix that.

So, the sugar, the flour, and other assorted cookie ingredients came out of the cupboard. A cup of this, a teaspoon of that. Baking soda, vanilla.  Mixing, measuring, dough plopping on the pan. But something was poking at me in the back of my mind. Eh, probably nothing. Into the oven went the cookies.

At the beep of the first timer I checked and thought the cookies looked a little odd – not the usual color, not the usual brownness, just didn’t have the usual “look” about them. Second check, third check. Something was amiss. Though there was nothing I could do about it now, I re-read the familiar recipe, just to see. Oh, for goodness’ sake – I had mistakenly added baking powder, not baking soda as the recipe required (both are leavening agents; baking powder contains baking soda; soda is usually used in cookies and powder in cakes). After a taste test (and one more, just to be sure!) I deemed them perfectly edible, if not exactly normal looking. They wouldn’t win a baking contest, but they weren’t a disaster, either. We would make do.

Sometimes I think maybe we “make do” in our Christian lives as well. Some of us slack off a bit in church attendance, knowing we need to get there on a more regular basis than we do, but, hey – God’s not taking attendance, is He? Bible a little dusty? Tithing a little off? Haven’t had a good, heart-to-heart with the Savior lately?. Maybe not, but we’re still doing fairly well. It’ll do.

For sure, the Christian life isn’t just living by the “rules.” God’s got them, and He does want us to live by them. But, no, He’s not taking attendance and doesn’t check to see if we’re at church every Sunday. And nobody’s handing out demerits for non-Scripture reading. But He wants so much more for us in this Christian life than “just making do.” The God of the universe, the Creator, our Savior wants us to fully know Him, have a deep relationship with Him. He wants us to live an expansive life, the best life possible. And the only way to do that is follow His recipe for life: to know Jesus Christ as Savior, learn all we can about Him and what he wants us to do, get to know His people and bring others to Him.

“Making do” is OK for cookies, but pretty sad for Christians. There’s really no such thing as a “Christian Contest,” but perhaps we should all live as if there were. I’ll start by re-reading that “recipe” God gave us.

“Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself. These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” Matthew 22:37-40 (The Message)