When I was a teenager and learning to cook, I would read recipes with a fair amount of bemusement. My favourite was the recipe for meringues, which said cryptically ‘whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks that just tip over when you lift the whisk.’ I would look at the liquid in the bowl and start whisking (by hand, in those days!), wondering what on earth a ‘soft peak’ was in this context and how long it could possibly take to create one! I would whisk for a few minutes and then ask my mother if it was ready. She would laugh, tell me to keep going, and then suddenly, magically (it seemed), the soft liquid would change colour and the soft peaks would start to form.
Cooking used to frustrate me because it was never quite as precise as I wanted it to be. Recipes were helpful in giving me the right amount of ingredients and the right amount of time to cook something in the oven, but they were also full of phrases which meant nothing to me until I had actually done them. ‘Lightly brown the onions’, ‘stir the sauce until it thickens’ and so on were phrases which did not mean very much to me until I had actually lived through the experience.
Our chilli-growing experience has reminded me of these first fumbling attempts at cooking. We planted the seeds as instructed in a pot that came with some soil and then waited. We waited a lot longer than the instructions said before we saw the first seedling appear. Then we watched as the seedlings grew. And grew. And we wondered how tall they would grow and how long it would take until they stopped just looking like a plant with leaves and actually sprouted chillies!
Then flowers appeared and Daddy Plant stopped growing, concentrating all his energies on blossoming. Mummy Plant became taller, still growing. And then chillies started appearing… tentatively at first, then almost more than we could count!
We still had more questions. How long before the chillies can be eaten? ‘When they start to turn red,’ we were told. I was puzzled. I’ve eaten green chillies. Why couldn’t I just eat one of these green chillies? However, we decided to wait, assuming that those with more experience of these things would be right.
Today, the miracle has occurred! The very first chilli (a loopy-loop one on Daddy Plant) to appear is starting to turn red!
This whole experience reminds me of Galatians 4:4: ‘But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son.’ God know the right time for everything. His timing is perfect. We look at life from our vantage point and often disagree. Many of the psalmists and prophets ask the plaintive question ‘How long?’ (see Job 19:2, Ps 13:1-2, Ps 35:17, Ps 79:5, Ps 94:3, Jeremiah 12:4) God often seems deaf to that question, but still continues to work out His plans and purposes according to a timescale which, with hindsight, we see is perfect. If you’re in that waiting period, wondering ‘how long?’, look at the red chilli and know God keeps His promises.