I love Japanese food.
I also love hanging out with people. I am an introvert who likes to be exhausted. (If you understand what I mean, you are probably one too.)
Finally, I love new and eclectic foods. I will try just about anything once.
Put all of these together on a Thursday night in 1996, and you have the makings of a great story. I love a great story.
I had just taken a position at a church as their “Singles and Recreation Pastor”. (There are so many things wrong with that title alone, I know, but I just can’t go there right now…maybe later.) I had been single all of about fifteen minutes in my life. In fact at the ripe old age of twenty-two, I was celebrating my second anniversary of being happily married to the only girl I ever dated for more than a month.
As you can see, I was made to be a Singles Pastor.
But this was a combo job so I also was in charge of recreation. I know what you are thinking, basketball, football, softball and other words that end in ball. There was a lot of that but there was also the recreation that was the pottery class with the older single ladies. And by single I mean widowed. I can honestly say that this was one of the strangest discoveries that I had after taking the position. Not that there is anything wrong with pottery. It just was not on my radar as a career choice.
Being new to the church, I really wanted to meet some people and I found out that there was a group of singles who went out for Japanese food once a month and they invited the new pastor to come along. This proved to be an interesting evening.
As we were all looking at the menus the waitress came around and asked if anyone would like something from the sushi menu. Now you need to understand that I am from the low country of South Carolina. We eat a lot of fish and a lot of shrimp. We can catch the stuff in our own back-yards. I even ate crawdads out of a ditch more than once as a child, which may explain a lot, but with all of the aforementioned crustaceans and swimming beasts …they were cooked (including the crawdads)!
Sushi had just made its way to the south, another invasion of Northern Aggression, and every one around me was pressuring me like I was a teenager getting ready to drink his first beer to eat sushi. But as I said, I will try anything once so I ordered me up some dead, raw fish. Yes, not so appealing if you call like it is…
I have always wondered if the Japanese, with their penchant for great electronics, have hidden cameras in these restaurants to capture silly Americans eating dead, raw fish for the first time. If so, they should start a show. It would be a ratings giant. Especially if this night had been caught on camera.
So they brought out my plate of what appeared to be some shrimp that had lost a battle with a blob of rice, and sat it in front of me. Everyone was talking and laughing and enjoying their sushi, so I was on my own to take my time. Off to the side of the plate, there was a small little dollop of what appeared to be Japanese butter. Cute.
For some reason they had dyed it green, who knows why, but that was not my primary concern.
If it had been 2009 rather than 1996, I would have figured it was just another wild haired off-shoot of the “green” movement, but since it was 1996 I figured the Japanese just liked their butter a little on the molded side. I had eaten blue cheese, so why not green butter?
I was getting ready to eat dead, raw fish–who cares about the color of the butter? However, one thing I have learned in the south is that butter can cover a multitude of sins and tasteless food. So like any red-blooded American, I spread every bit of that green Japanese butter on top of my shrimp, got it real close to my mouth, inhaled, and shoved it in.
There are not sufficient words in the English language that I can use to describe to you the amount of shock that enveloped my body. It was as if liquid lava were being created in my throat and mouth and all oxygen had been taken out of the air while Ultimate Fighting Champion Randy Couture beat me in the throat and gut. As I sat gasping for air I felt as though I may never be the same again. It was as if I were in the middle of one of those bad dreams where everyone around you is moving in slow motion and you can not communicate to them. I tried to let people know that I may have just eaten lava but I could not breathe much less talk. Involuntary tears began to run down my cheeks, and life as I knew it stopped for just a few moments. Cute little Japanese butter. Also known as… wasabi.
If you have eaten wasabi, you are commiserating with me as you laugh as well. It’s all good–laugh away. I lived.
If you have not eaten wasabi, just imagine blending habenero and jalapeño peppers in your Cuisinart, mixing that into a jar of horseradish, then adding some actual liquid fire for good measure, and you will get the picture..
This small, innocent, seemingly insignificant, cute little dollop was actually a concentrated, power-packed, punch-you-in-the-gut, life-altering experience.
I have never forgotten that moment.
Close to ten years later, while I was reading some of the words of Jesus, I had a similar experience. I was studying the Bible, just minding my own business when a small, innocent, seemingly insignificant, cute little dollop of scripture I had read many, many times before became a concentrated, power-packed, punch-you-in-the-gut, life-altering experience. I had read the words many times before. They were cute. They were innocent and seemingly insignificant. Then it hit me. It almost startled me what Jesus was saying. I took a shot to the spiritual gut that rocked my world and made me realize that this tiny bit of scripture was actually a wasabi-punch to my soul. It changed my life. It was as if Jesus had just slapped me and I wondered… should I turn the other cheek?
I have never forgotten that moment.
On a quest to really examine the words of Jesus and their impact on our lives, this book will look at several small scriptures that pack a very big punch.
I pray it takes your breath away.
