Have you ever made a pitcher of sweet tea and the sugar wasn't all mixed in? Instead you can see it is still settled at the bottom. Or had a cup of coffee and all the sugar & flavor is still sitting at the bottom of the cup when you take that first sip? Ugh! It is not anything like what you were expecting to taste.
I was talking with someone the other day and they had made their cup of coffee in the morning and left the spoon in the kitchen, but didn't take the first sip until sitting at their desk and in doing so, realized that they had forgotten to stir it. Then they mentioned the verse "Stir up the gift"... well, I keep thinking about that, and it's been a couple of days now.
Here's the verse:
2 Timothy 1: 6 "Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands." (NKJV)
In the NLT it says it this way, "This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you."
In the Strong's it is a combination of two words that mean "to re-enkindle; stir up", and it speaks of it like stirring a fire.
We have a fire place and we have had a wood stove, and I have occasionally added wood to the fire to keep it going, and you see the embers can end up not close to each other, so I would "stir" them, with the tool to get them closer together before adding more wood, and they would put out more heat when close together and cause the new piece(s) of wood to catch the fire adding more warmth/heat.
This is a good picture of what happens from being a part of a local church. You get together with your church family and together there is a warmth. Together those that may be burning hotter and help the "heat" in others to increase, and we can encourage the "new wood" to burn, too. So, in being with others, if I am stuck, or sick, or discouraged, I can find hope, encouragement, and others can pray for me.
However, I keep thinking about the verse, and the conversation...
Me, being me, I think of preparing a meal, including the beverages.
As I asked in my opening of this- in making sweet tea, I have had the water cool off too much to dissolve the sugar, so even with a lot of stirring it didn't mix in like it does when it's still warm. What happens if I don't get it all mixed? The sweetness is all at the bottom of the pitcher. I've been drinking a lot of water lately, with the sugar-free "flavor" (basically kool aid) in it. If I don't get that all mixed up well, I can end up with a mouth full of the kool aid, and that is not an enjoyable experience, either. Then in meal preparation, or baking. You rarely dump everything in and serve it- even a good salad needs to be tossed, right? And sometimes, the stirring needs to continue to happen, because the items that I am working to incorporate into the whole continue to sink to the bottom of the cup or bowl.
Stirring is to cause an especially light movement, or change of position; to disturb the quiet of, to agitate, to disturb the relative position of the particles or parts of, especially by a continued circular movement; to bring into notice or debate; to rouse to activity, to call forth, to begin to be active. (Taken from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stir )
"Stir up the gift of God"... stir it up...
I don't want the gift(s) He's given me, He's put inside of me, to sit at the bottom to be dormant.
I don't want them sitting at the bottom, not adding flavor, or spice, to my life and how I am able to flavor where I go and people I interact with.
How do I stir up the gifts that are in me? I know that I am not aware of all the gifts He has given me, butI do know some of them.
How do I stir then up, though?
In drinks I use a spoon.
When I make a nice add-in for my protein coffee, I use a tool to froth the milk, before I add it.
When baking, I usually use an electric mixer.
There are different tools for stirring. Each is used to achieve a different type of texture and result.
In mixing sweetener into a beverage ordered at a restaurant, or the flavoring into my glass of water at home, I use a spoon or my straw to stir it in... the ice in the beverage helps agitate the particles and mix them in, and sometimes it mixes better than others, so I may have to continue to stir as I drink it, because the flavor is better when it is all mixed together.
Then I have recently learned how much fun it is to use the tool to froth milk. It is a little tool with a spring on the end of the "beater", that is formed into a tight circle. I love how I can have a very little bit of milk in the cup, and it whips it up to at least twice as much, by aerating it. The tool agitates the liquid and adds air, causing the volume of the liquid to increase. It is fun to watch the milk grow from just using that one tool. Then when I pour the frothed milk in the cup that has the coffee in it, it floats on top of the beverage, because of the air added, and the consistency is much lighter than it was as milk.
Then another wonderful tool is my electric mixer. When using this, I put the ingredients into the bowl in a certain order mixing them together in a certain order, for a desired outcome. That order is often important when it comes to achieving the desired results. It all gets put into the bowl as separate ingredients, but all mixed together they make the batter, or dough. As long as the recipe is followed, the science of it all works and it turns into the cookies, cake, bread... whatever it is I have put the correct ingredients together to create.