Editor's Note Those times you burn the biscuits By Darcy L. Fargo

June 16, 2021

She burned the biscuits.

I recently had an opportunity to visit my dad’s sister, my aunt and godmother, and her husband at their new home in Champlain. While the primary purpose of my visit was delivering a family heirloom to them, the errand gave me an opportunity to see their new home and catch up after an extended time not seeing each other due to the pandemic. My aunt offered to make lunch for the occasion.

Shortly after I arrived at their home and unloaded the heirloom, my aunt gave me a tour of their new home. As we ended the tour, we heard a loud, high-pitched beeping noise. It was the smoke detector.

My aunt had forgotten about biscuits she had baking for strawberry shortcake. The beeping smoke detector and the smell of smoke filling the house told us what happened: my aunt had burned the biscuits.

Quite a bit younger than my father, my aunt was born almost directly between my father and my older sister. She’s always been more like an older friend than an aunt.

My aunt is normally a good cook. She doesn’t usually blacken food to the point it sets off the smoke detector, at least. Because we’re like friends, we all got a good laugh at the burnt biscuits, and we ate our strawberries over ice cream instead of on top of biscuits.

But haven’t we all those moments? Sometimes, things go wrong despite our best intentions.

Even in ministry, there are times when things don’t go the way we hope they will, even though we may think we’re doing what God has called us to do. I can think of at least a couple instances in my own life when my feeble attempts at planning an event or group or some other ministry fell flat.

I firmly believe that God has a purpose for even our failures. We may fail because we need to learn some lesson, because we need a dose of humility, to better prepare us for future ministries or for some other reason God has planned that I don’t recognize or understand.

There are times when the failure gives us nothing but maybe the ability to laugh at ourselves and our struggles.
Especially when the failure is something as simple as burning the biscuits.