A Saturday Evening Post

                We had just moved into our apartment in Nikopol Ukraine. Stuart, a missionary just north, in Belarus, helped us get settled and thought it would be a good idea to take me to the grocery store and help me figure out things like which package was buttermilk, and which was sour cream as they have identical packaging.

                In Ukraine, products are all in Ukrainian, and while related to the Russian language, it has a few differences that can be quite problematic for an unsuspecting missionary. Russians like to put cognac (or alcohol) in their gourmet chocolates, which I am not used to. To help me identify these chocolates, he told me to look for a word in the ingredients that sounds like ‘tsoo-ker-ki’. Perhaps he had seen that on boxes of fancy candy in Ukraine, but we trusted his advice.  For several weeks My husband and I examined boxes trying to avoid all the boxes of chocolate with tsoo-ker-ki but failed to find any. After several frustrating weeks, I remember finally finding one that didn’t have this word anywhere on the box. Fancy chocolates are for serving to guests and so we proudly displayed our box of chocolate-covered cranberries. I remember biting into it and tasting something like that awful cough syrup your grandmother gave you, probably the same one she gave your mother when she was little. This one definitely had alcohol in it, and it burned!

I brought the question up to my Russian teacher and found out tsoo-ker-ki does not mean alcohol but rather, sugar or candy. So, I was trying to avoid all the boxes of chocolates that have candy in them!

                Life is like that. We hold ourselves to an impossible standard of perfection. We are trying to look for the box of chocolate with no candy believing that if we try hard enough, we will attain it.

                2 Corinthians 12:9

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 

                Perfection is only in Christ, let him be glorified in your weaknesses. Perfection isn’t attainable. Don’t lie to yourself that it is. It’s like looking for a box of chocolate with no candy.