Garlic and Forgiveness

I’ve been spending a bit more time in the kitchen lately, learning a few basic recipes—nothing too complicated, mind you. But since I love dishes with a hefty touch of garlic, I naturally had to master chopping, mincing, and crushing it. It’s still very much a work in progress. That’s when I ran into a stubborn little problem: garlic settles into the skin of your fingers like it plans to live there forever.

After several failed attempts at scrubbing my hands raw with soap, Suzy took pity on me and offered what she called the “Martha Stewart trick.”

“Head over to the sink,” she said, “and turn on the warm water. Take a stainless steel spoon or the dull side of a knife, hold it under the stream, and rub your fingers against the metal for fifteen seconds. The smell will vanish.”

Now, I didn’t believe Suzy or Martha for a single minute. But I gave it a shot anyway, and sure enough, the scent was completely gone.

It got me thinking. Sometimes our mistakes work a lot like garlic. Long after we’ve apologized, made amends, or done our level best to scrub the slate clean, the lingering guilt still sticks to us. Confession gets our heart back in the right place, but God’s grace is what finally lifts the burden. Like that stainless steel under running water, grace washes away every last trace of what we couldn’t scrub off on our own—leaving us completely renewed.

I have a feeling Martha might have learned her trick from the real “Master Chef.”