By Danielle Wynn, Director of Youth & Children’s Ministry, Jubilee Church Wirral

A pinch of this and a pinch of that..

I wonder which way you cook? Do you follow a recipe to the letter or do you treat each dish as a blank canvas, one to be artistically ‘created’ and considered unique each time?

I recently watched a film with my children where the main character, a young American girl, had a passion for cooking and spent the summer with her relatives in Paris. Her uncle was a baker and had a well known ‘patisserie.’

She was one who would usually follow a recipe and not deviate from it. Her uncle, however, was not. He would search high and low, looking for something ‘special’ to add to each recipe to make it different each time and improve the quality. He called it the ‘Je ne sais quoi’ practice and suggested that she should get used to it if she wanted to improve her cooking. In French it means ‘ a quality that cannot be described or named easily.’

It occurred to me that this ‘Je ne sais quoi’ should be something we aspire to…something that we lack that the Lord knows we need.
Sometimes we are aware of it and sometimes we are not. Is it wisdom we need? Is it more patience? Is it kindness towards others? Is it something that is beyond our understanding but not the Lord’s?

The Lord is refining us and shaping us. Sometimes that can feel uncomfortable. Sometimes it can take a while! Perhaps we should ask ourselves….Do we want to change? Do we want to be more like him?

We have so many promises over our lives. Are we seeking God to understand and receive them? Are we hungry for more of him?
What is the ‘Je ne sais quoi’ that the Lord wants to give us that we need to find today?