Spread It on Thick

July 25, 2008

By Randy Mantik

One of my favorite things to ask folks when I meet them is what type of peanut butter they like, creamy or crunchy. It may not be quite as psychologically indicative as a Rorschach test, yet it is always interesting to see how loyal people are to their particular type.

What do I like? Creamy, only creamy. Why? I can’t figure out what is really in crunchy. A few years ago a natural bread company was found to have put sawdust in their bread (high fiber, you know). In peanut butter, any additives are all covered up in the creamy gobs of whipped legumes. How do you really know what’s going crunch in crunchy?

Some have come up with Kissinger-like solutions in their households. They keep both! I will rise up and bless my mom that she keeps the creamy stuff around just for me! But my brother put the crunchy stuff on my son Caleb’s toast by mistake a while ago. He took one bite and said, “I don’t like the peanut butter with the coconut in it!” (That’s my boy!)

Whether you like creamy or crunchy, many of us peanut butter aficionados enjoy it spread thick. I guess that’s the idea of a song my wife, Debbie, remembers from the ’80s — “Spreading it around like peanut butter.”

In life, we can be spread too thin. But all of us can turn to the One who has no limits.

Ephesians 1:7,8 talks about how we can be blessed “with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us” (NIV).

God has no need to be stingy. He is limitless.

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit” (Psalm 147:5).

We can trust God. We can depend on His limitlessness. We get spread too thin, but the blessing of the kingdom of God is to have an infinite Partner with us in our weakness and know what the apostle Paul knew: “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” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

In turn, each of us is invited to spread it on thick toward others — His grace and love that is. We will never run out. And the more we share of His bounty toward us, the better our world will be.

— Randy Mantik is lead pastor at CrossPoint AG in Portage, Wis.