Lessons from an Oreo Cookie

I love it when God takes an ordinary moment and shows me an extraordinary truth about His heart towards me. Sometimes I pass it onto to my kids right then, but other times I let it sink into my heart for a while. That’s how my friend Wendy felt when God used an Oreo cookie to teach her about his wholeness offered for our brokenness. Here is how Wendy describes it in her book, “Out of the Mouths of Babes.“

It was another normal lunchtime of peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and apples for my children and me. We had all finished our lunch and in our home this means “treat time.” A “treat” is usually our family favorite: Oreo cookies.

Eating an Oreo is an art to each individual. Some dunk the cookie in milk; some eat it all at once; others take the cookie apart to eat each part separately. I have perfected my own way of eating these mouth-watering morsels. I twist the cookies apart and scrape the crème filling off with my teeth. This leaves my most favorite part of the cookie: the wafer. Eating the wafer is almost sacred to me. I never want to be interrupted. Delightfully savoring each bite, I slowly eat each wafer, being careful not to break either one; somehow the experience is not the same if a wafer gets broken.

Without my knowledge, my children have begun to eat their Oreos the same way. I had never noticed their ability to scrape the crème without breaking the wafer. (It must be in the genes.) On this particular day, I noticed my son, three at the time, finishing his last wafer at the very same time I was finishing mine. That is when it happened: his wafer broke. It was heartbreaking to him, and because I had broken my wafers before, I knew just how he felt. He brought his broken wafer to me, and as I looked at my whole wafer, I gladly exchanged it with him.

It was that moment God reminded me of His love for us. His desire is to take the broken pieces of our lives and exchange them with His wholeness. He does not want us to wait. He wants us to come just as we are. God came to heal the broken hearted. Luke 4:18 says, “He (God) has sent me(Jesus) to heal the broken hearted and to announce that captives shall be released. (TLB)This scripture is quoted from Isaiah 61:1, where the word “bind” is used instead of heal. In the original Hebrew the word bind means “to wrap firmly, govern, healer, or wrap about.”

Will you take the broken pieces of your heart to the Healer and let Him wrap His arms firmly around you today? He loves you and came to give you abundant life (John 10:10). You cannot experience the abundant life until you give your brokenness over to the only one who can make you whole-Jesus.

Wendy Pope is a wife, a mom, a P31 speaker, an author, our development coordinator and the inspiration behind over a thousand women reading through the Chronological Bible in a Year with Proverbs 31 Ministries.

Copyright 2009, Wendy Pope – All rights reserved.

Wendy, thank you for sharing that story with us today. I don’t think I’ll ever have another Oreo cookie without remembering that Jesus came to heal my broken places and make me whole again! And what a greatD6 moment to pass on this spiritual truth to our kids.

A copy of Wendy’s book, “Out of the Mouths of Babes, a D6 Mom Tshirt, and a year’s worth of Family Devotional Magazines from D6.

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