Scrambled Please

According to Wikipedia in 2009, “an estimated 62.1 million metric tons of eggs were produced worldwide from a total laying flock of approximately 6.4 billion hens.”  That’s a whole lot of eggs!  Interestingly enough the population of the world in 2009 was 6.804 billion.  So why do I find this information interesting?  Well it actually has nothing to do with eggs, which I am humbly going to share I didn’t have any idea, so go ahead and get a good chuckle in, it’s completely ok, I can take it – here comes the explanation…

As a child I was raised in a United Church of Christ church, sporadically went to Sunday School there and later got confirmed and married in a UCC church.  We prayed at dinner and before bed and sometimes my parents shared information regarding biblical principles but not too often if my memory serves me correctly.  So imagine my surprise 11 years ago when I started worshipping at a church that was really igniting a passion in me to grow my faith based on biblical truth.  It was the first time (or maybe the first time it stood out to me) that I heard the term equally yolked…haha there it is…it is actually equally yoked!  Ooops- it was years before I actually realized I had that one all wrong – so pastors’ beware do not grow weary in explaining things in great detail for goofballs like myself.

So if this yoke has nothing to do with an egg what exactly is it?  Huh, yeah that took me even longer to figure out.  And oddly enough from what I could find the bible doesn’t even say anything about being equally yoked, however it does talk about being unequally yoked. (feel free to send me a message if I missed something)  In straight up layman’s terms as far as I am concerned, it means being on the same path as another Christian you are in a relationship with. Not just your marriage.  All relationships.  Here’s where the scrambled comes in…the majority of my relationships were not equally yoked – which meant in one simple word – scrambled.

Back to the egg – interestingly enough Wikipedia defines the yolk as  “a part of an egg (or just of the egg cell in non-egg-laying animals) that feeds the developing embryo in animals. In whole eggs, 43% of the protein comes from the yolk……The amount of yolk in an egg cell affects the developmental processes that follow fertilization.”  Can we look at that a minute and relate it to our hearts and souls as Christians?  It feeds the developing embryo…it’s where the protein comes from…it effects the development process… huh, maybe the core of our relationships isn’t too far off from a yolk.  I along with what I will assume has been many of you have spent a lot of time in relationships with others that were a tangled mess.  You know the ones that you continually keep putting your time, heart and soul into but keep coming up empty handed, one sided or frustrating?  And hey, let me tell you I totally do the whole self examining thing…is it me, did I do something, should I have done something differently, what is going on in their life that may have made this situation the way it is right now, did I respond out of love?  And the list goes on…and I continue to do this in my yoked relationships as well – I am a firm believer that sometimes we just really need to examine things closely.  But, it wasn’t after really investing some time into this whole egg subject 😉 aka yoke…that I realized it didn’t have anything to do with me, or the other person, rather my relationships weren’t with people who were walking on the same path as me, and that had to change.

So then what?  Do you just up and dump all your friends?  Well, thankfully for me, I just dove into further growing my relationship with Christ, feed my developing embryo if you will, and then God did the rest.  Miraculously He pulled my husband into a deeper walk with Him, He pulled a friend or two into deep walks as well aside of me,  a relationship just stopped (on it’s own, no fights, no exchange of words, just neither of us ever contacted the other after a lunch date one day), one relocated for work…. then there were the new people God put into my life that were also walking the same path.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t unyoked, if you will, people in my life, because there are, and I am friends with some of them, but that doesn’t change who I am.

There are however relationships that we can’t sever like family and co-workers, but we are called to make our paths clear so that others can follow.  We are also called to guard our hearts, which Paul lays out in Philippians 4:6-7.   It’s all about communication and praying for the relationship before talking about it with the other person, this brings the peace of God into our hearts and minds, and the relationship.  Don’t we all just want a poached relationship… nice, soft, and squishy, warm and gooey?  I have learned that if my intentions are true and just and were pleasing to Him, I can’t control how others react…I need to be reminded of that, often. And with these others I usually end up with scrambled with a shell or two in it – but that’s where it grows, relationships are messy and when you dig through the scrambled you can end up with something amazing….but it has to be what everyone wants, and in my experience you only find people willing to do that, dig through the goo to get the shell with you, to honor and respect you; who are equally yoked with you.  That doesn’t mean we don’t love and pray for these people, it just means it’s usually just a little harder.   Like when you crack an egg at lunch thinking it’s hard boiled and it wasn’t.

So as you walk in love with others, just remember that even though sometimes you want hard boiled, you could end up with sunny-side up instead.  It’s part of the plan, part of how we work on ourselves, our relationships and how we can grow in and bring others to Him.