THE BIG LEMON COOKIE

I read it's quite common for people👥 to be superstitious. And that some even practice routines and habits, believing those rituals will help regulate their daily luck.

I don’t believe in any of those hocus-pocus ideas. After all, I've been creating my own bad luck my entire life. Not once have I needed assistance from a black cat,🐈 a broken mirror, or any tall ladders. 

Practicing routines and habits to influence my luck-of-the-day is, in my mind, a bunch of silly hooey. Except. . . this one little, crazy belief. A misperception from my past. One that just might be considered a. . . superstition. 

 

It was June 1964, back when every June Cleaver in town signed up their kids for Vacation Bible School. VBS was the best gig in town. It was a break for the moms, and a fun getaway for the kids. At VBS, they always served up those big 🍋  lemon cookies, along with a Dixie Cup full of orange Kool-Aide. In those days, getting a cookie treat, every day, for an entire week—now that was a big deal!

During snack break one day, a volunteer teacher explained something, she believed to be, as a very reverent Bible 📖 rule. A rule that my inexperience mind🧒 took on as a crazy superstition: “The Bible is the Holy Word of God," the teacher said, “Never put anything on top of it—it’s very disrespectful to God!” 

 

Hearing that, I about spit out my orange 🟠 Kool-aide, considering I had just set my lemon cookie on top of my Bible. 🤯

 

I quickly jerked it up, and even though I felt spooked, I ate that entire cookie. How soon will the lighting strike? But have no fear, I lived to tell the story. However, after that day, I struggled to put anything on top of my Bible. Not an ink🖋 pen, a cell 📱phone, or even a used tissue. And most definitely not a lemon cookie!! 

 

Perhaps the VBS worker miss-spoke that day, or maybe it was my young nine-year-old brain 🧠, who misperceived the entire message. Either way, placing an object on a Bible became a fearful superstition. 

Eventually I renovated my mind, like renovating a room. Sometimes you just have to update your thoughts. God alone is what I worship, revere, and hold dear to my soul. Not some silly superstition. 

That rule about placing anything on a Bible, was terribly wrong. Holiness is Christ Himself.☦ Not a book with words written on the pages. 

It's okay to set things on top of my Bible. Well. . .maybe not a lemon cookie. Not because it’s wrong, but because I'd much rather eat the cookie, drink my Kool-Aide, and enjoy the moment.💗😀 

Anna J. Wise

Mercy Me