Goodbye Cookie Cutter Life Honey

I am at such peace today being me. But I have lived much of my life running from one cookie cutter to another. Your cookie cutter. His cookie cutter. Her cookie cutter. I ran from cookie cutter to cookie cutter, figuring somehow I would find just the right cookie cutter – and FIT. But I never did. Of course, I wasn’t made for the world’s cookie cutters. I wasn’t made to be jammed into somebody else’s ideas and opinions of what my life should look like. I was made to be the me God created me to be. But we’re living in a cookie cutter world, aren’t we?

How many times have I tried to stuff someone into my cookie cutters? Too many. How many times has someone else tried to stuff me in theirs? Too many times. Did I mean well? Oftentimes, yes. Did they mean well? Oftentimes yes. But wherever did we get this idea that we were to recreate other people to look like our human idea of what people should look like?

Were we created in the image of other humans? No. We were created in the image of God. But here so many of us are, scurrying around with our cookie cutters, rolling each other into great big balls of dough, kneading each other down, and then shoving our cookie cutters into the dough. Ouch. Right? We’re not talking about dough here. We’re talking about human lives. And the razor sharp edges of the cookie cutters, when they come crashing down, they can hurt like – well, hell. To be perfectly blunt – no pun intended.

I am the first to confess I have spent far too long running around with my cookie cutters shoved under my arm, grabbing this person and that person, and tossing them in the mixing bowl to get all the ingredients just right. For this, I ask the Lord God almighty to forgive me. And for this, dear world, I ask every single one of you that I have harmed in this way to please forgive me.

I am also the first to confess I have spent equally far long believing that I was a failure if I did not look like everyone else. In many ways, I gave up trying years ago. But in many ways, when I search my heart, I have continued to try – right up until now. Maybe my ways and means have changed, and maybe I have set my heart on different cookie cutters, but they are cookie cutters just the same.

Did God create me to look like you? Did He create you to look like me? Did God in the Book of Genesis create the world with cookie cutters and then dole out cookie cutters to all His children so we could run around our lives trying to make everyone conform to one another? Of course not. We are designed to conform to Jesus Christ, not man.

I would like to propose that all of us master “bakers” turn in our cookie cutters, repent from our wrongdoing, and look to the Lord rather than to the world for the image in which we were created. I propose we throw away our little mixers, our mixing bowls, our enormous spoons and dough and everything that goes along with it, and most especially our cookie cutters.

Let’s stop trying to recreate one another in the world’s image. One good look at the state of the world is enough to recognize why we so desperately need to give up our cookie cutter lives. Let’s look to the Lord and to His Word, let’s renew our minds by studying and applying His Word, and let’s become who we were created to be. May He transform us so that we may truly be like Him.

Not cookie cutter kids. But children of the most high God, looking and acting and being as our Father has created us to be. To Him be all glory. Amen.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Genesis 1:26-28 KJV

1“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:1-2 KJV

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