Thanks Senator Dirksen

Tonight we had a wonderful dinner, it was prepared by my wife from a recipe that came to her from our son David's mother-in-law. It is called Senator Dirksen's Chicken. It is a wonderful dish made from asparagus soup, asparagus, mushrooms and chicken with various other ingredients. We had some brown rice and corn to compliment the entree and I am a very contented (=stuffed) husband tonight. My thanks to Marilu for sharing the recipe and to Senator Dirksen for lending his name to the dish.

Because the meal was so outstanding and my wife had worked so hard to prepare it, I decided to do the dishes (ok, my wife helped me to decide). That's when I got to wondering about doing dishes. When did doing the dishes become such a hi tech undertaking!?!

First I must tell you, my wife and I have fundamentally different approaches to doing the dishes. My wife feels compelled to fill the sink within an inch of overflowing and then use an amazingly large amount of dish detergent in order to produce a mountain of suds. Then the soaking dishes are washed in this soapy water which becomes increasingly filled with grease and food products until the process is complete (often necessitating draining and refilling the sink to get fresh water to contaminate all over again). My approach is to fill a large dish or pot with hot water and a little dish detergent. Then using only the water necessary I rinse the plate and wash it with a soapy dish clothe dipped into the container of soapy water. The dishes never sit in dirty water and the amount of soap necessary is greatly reduced. You can decide for yourselves which approach is the wiser. That is not what got me wondering tonight. What I noticed was the dish detergent.

I remember Palmolive being the green detergent that Madge used to have women soak their hands in before having a manicure. Now it has become Ultra Palmolive Scrub Buster with Micro Beads!!!! What is that? I was almost afraid the stuff would explode when I mixed it with hot water. The dishes got clean, but no cleaner or easier than with the old Palmolive. I guess we have become so conditioned that there has got to be an easier way that the people who want to sell us dish detergent must come up with more "powerful" sounding names to get us to buy their product.

I wonder how many Christians are looking for an easier way to become a follower of Christ? I have not found a substitute for the example of Jesus, dying to self and doing God's will and not my own. I don't always succeed, but I have stopped trying to find an easier way since Jesus said I would have to take up my cross daily and follow Him. That sounds like just plain old hard work, just like doing the dishes.