Psalm 1:1

I absolutely love chocolate chip cookies.  I love them small.  I love them large.  I love them with tiny chips.  I love them with chunks.  I love them made by Keebler’s elves.   I love them make by my wife.   I love them baked.  I love them raw.  I love them with a tad of vanilla.  I love them without the tad of vanilla.

I don’t love what chocolate chip cookies do to my waist.  I don’t love what they do to my self-control. I don’t love what they do to the number on our bathroom scale. Yesterday I was feeling particularly vulnerable while picking up milk at our grocery store.   As I picked up the milk I felt the cookie urge.  As I walked past the cookie aisle I’m sure I could smell them beckoning.  Visions of sitting in my easy chair with a bagful on my lap filled me with thoughts of paradise.  Surely in heaven there will be a chocolate chip cookie tree in my garden.  There will be no serpent.

I am so grateful I learned my weekly memory verses when I was a yet a boy.  On each shoulder sat a convincer.  In my left ear came a voice that said, “Just one.  You’re a man.  You can handle just one.”  In my right ear I heard the whisper, “Remember Psalm 1:1.  Repeat after me.  Blessed is the man who walketh not past the cookies nor standeth in the aisle staring nor sits with a bagful on his lap.”

I wish I could tell you I won.  Well, I did – sort of.  Instead I bought a bag of chocolate chips.  Forget the dough, baked or raw.   Sometimes compromise isn’t a bad word.  It has ten letters, not four.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 17, 2016

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