Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: BACK TO BASICS (02/16/17)
-
TITLE: Sugar Sandwiches | Previous Challenge Entry
By Stanley McMahon
02/22/17 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
My grandmother, Granny Maghie, was probably not among the wealthiest of her peers. She had grown up in Cavan and had a tough upbringing, and a difficult life ensued. She lost her husband, my grandfather, early on in her first marriage, to tuberculosis. She overcame many life events and by the time I was born, she was living in a house without running water and sporting an outside toilet.
Nevertheless, she was not to be beaten when it came to hospitality. My brothers and I were frequent visitors to her house, especially on a Saturday afternoon. When we stayed over, we slept on the chairs in the lounge – no guest bedrooms – and shared her living area with the mice that came out when all had gone quiet.
Primitive, memorable, hilarious and uncomfortable are all words that come to mind, but the greatest treat was her sugar sandwiches. For those of you who have never tried them, you might want to stick to something you would find on the supermarket shelves. Sweeter than sweet they were, and very grainy. It was an idea carried over from the second World War when food was rationed and creativity was high. The sugar sandwich was the poor man’s equivalent of jelly.
Maggie Walker, on the other hand, was a lady who lived across the road from us. She was friendly, but scary. My parents trusted her enough to let us go to her house after school if they weren’t at home. My most vivid memories of Maggie Walker were that she was big, in every way, had more gums than teeth and had her own variety of sugar sandwiches: the butter sandwich. This was a product which consisted of the normal two slices of bread, apparently buttered in the normal way, but the centrepiece was an abnormal lathering of butter. Nothing else.
These two experiences, although particular to my childhood and in their own way, quite humourous, also illustrate two deep truths in the life of the believer. The sugar sandwich was a substitute for the real thing. In the world of Christian living, the real thing is one person: Jesus. As Matt Redmond says, ‘I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus.’
Even as believers we substitute peripheral things for the person at the heart of our worship. During the fifties and sixties there was a hard-line shunning of identifiable worldliness. The Pharisaical nature of these tenets were challenged during the following decades, as a balance was sought. However, it seems that nowadays the pendulum has swung far to the other side, so that it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish believers’ lifestyle from those of unbelievers. Jesus has been pushed out and the sugar sandwich of hedonism has taken His place.
Maggie Walker’s all butter sandwich is a warning to us to keep the main thing, the main thing. The butter is not the centrepiece. It’s the liner, the accompanist, the secondary but necessary thing that needs to be there to make it work.
Put simply, Jesus needs to be the centrepiece in our lives. Put theologically, Jesus must be Lord of all; His lordship must stretch across every part of our lifestyles and reach deep into our worship. There is no substitute, no equivalent, for He is high above all. The more we appreciate who He is, the more our lives will be distinct and identifiably holy. If we try to hide Him and make Him palatable, we will fail. Only when He is lifted up, will all men be drawn to Him.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.