This is something that hit me one morning last week. I realized that more often than not I always end up with the perfect amount of milk left over when eating my bowl of cereal each morning. But I started to wonder, if I started pouring my milk first would I get the same result? The answer is definitely no, I tried it, turns out to be not enough milk, and the biggest part of all, the cereal on top is so dry that you have to come back and pour milk again. That is a huge advantage to pouring the milk second when it comes to making my perfect bowl of cereal. Not having to repeat a step.
But my point is not to talk about the directions of pouring cereal. My point is to show that if the bowl represents our life, and if we are the milk, if we keep trying to put ourself first, before we try to put in the necessary pieces of life (the cereal) then we will always have to back track and repeat a step.
My wife (Morgann) and I have a tradition/ritual/habit, that before work every day we pray together. This is something we have been doing for around two years now. It is something that we added to our life and I don't believe we will ever stop. We love it, it connects us to God, and helps to remind us that we are not first, that God is first in our lives and throughout the day we need to put Him there, letting Him guide us. There has been about three days in the last two years that we haven't prayed in the morning together, for one reason or the other. But on those days I can really tell that I started my day by pouring my milk first. I now know, and have learned through doing this, that the prayer with Morgann before heading to work is a cereal piece that I can't put into my bowl if the milk is already their.
Most of us will, excuse me, let me rephrase that, all of us will put ourselves first majority of every day. But keep in mind when we do, when we start putting that milk in first, don't ever forget to add the cereal. Don't forget to add to your bowl the pieces that are most important to you!
What are your cereal pieces? Do you have pieces of your life that need to start being first? Is it time to start putting yourself second in the bowl of life?
In the writing of this blog I actually found a Facebook fanpage titled -
"I hate when people poor milk before cereal"
