Do you have a drawer under your oven? And more importantly—what’s living in there? Cookie sheets? Muffin tins? A colony of plastic lids that haven’t had matching bowls since the Bush administration.
And the bigger question: Are you even using that drawer correctly?
My mother used that drawer for cookie sheets, and therefore—by the sacred laws of Southern motherhood—I was required to do the same. You don’t question Mama’s kitchen theology. You just obey and hope she doesn’t notice you put the castiron skillet in the dishwasher.
But who gets to tell you what’s right? Who shapes your choices? And when does “that’s how Mama did it” turn into “that’s how I got myself into trouble”?
Before we go any further, let me ask something bold: Do you know the truth about oven drawers?
Let me tell you a story.
There’s an old African tale about a man and his beloved lamb. He fed it by hand, played with it, probably let it sleep on the porch. Hard times came, and he had to take the lamb to market.
Three thieves heard about this and cooked up a plan.
As the man walked down the road with the lamb over his shoulders, the first thief said, “Why are you carrying that dog?”
The man laughed. “It’s a lamb.”
A little farther along, the second thief said, “Finelooking dog you’ve got there.”
The man frowned. “It’s… a lamb. Pretty sure.”
Near the market, the third thief shook his head. “Sir, they won’t let you bring a dog in there.”
That did it. The man set the lamb down, stared at it, and thought, “Well, if three different people say it’s a dog, it must be a dog.” And he walked away.
If he’d turned around, he would’ve seen the thieves scooping up his verymuchnotadog lamb and heading home for supper.
Now, back to the oven drawer.
For years, I never questioned its purpose. Mama said it was for cookie sheets, so it was for cookie sheets. End of discussion. But like the man with the lamb, I realized I’d let other voices define reality for me.
Then I learned the shocking truth: Some oven drawers are storage drawers… and some are warming drawers.
If your oven is older than your church’s carpet, it’s probably storage. But newer ovens? That drawer might be designed to keep food warm.
Which means: Trying to warm your biscuits in a storage drawer is just wishful thinking. Storing your plastic lids in a warming drawer is how you end up explaining yourself to the fire department.
It is not your mother’s oven.
And that’s the point.
In a world where everyone has an opinion—loudly—and where people will swear up and down that the lamb you’re carrying is a dog, you need a center that doesn’t wobble. You need truth that isn’t based on trends, polls, or whoever shouts the loudest.
You need someone who won’t call darkness “light” just because it’s fashionable.
You need the One who doesn’t change.
You need the One who won’t mislead you for His own gain.
You need the One who tells you the truth—even when three thieves insist otherwise.
And that place, that Person, is where I always end up: Jesus.
