Baked or fried.
Fully salted, low salt, or salt-free.
Original or heavily seasoned flavor bomb.
Rippled or plain.
Potato, corn, or plantain.
Whatever your preference, it’s a savory treat that we are excited to eat. Maybe you’ve been saving them for this ideal moment. Or on a whim, you grabbed a bag while shopping on an empty stomach.
You sit, salivating in anticipation of the first bite.
*Pop*
You open the bag without eruption and look inside.
There are so few chips in the package, you could almost count them on one hand. Disappointed, you may grumble a bit before crunching away.
Chips are a lightweight food. Yet, regardless of the size that is printed on the package, we always hope for more. Feeling cheated by the amount of space that was packaged with our chips, we overlook its purpose.
The extra ‘air’ is for our benefit. What looks like a void to us is actually protection for the product during shipping. Without it, we’d end up with bags of flavored crumbs and dust, rather than the larger shapes intact.
Chips are fragile. Have you ever tried to break off a small piece? It shatters. Just one drop of the bag damages them; they’re easily crushed.
Chip packaging remind us that we need to include extra space in our lives too.
It’s necessary to have pockets of rest and down time in our schedules. What may feel like a void to us is actually protection for our hearts and our souls. Knowing our limits, we tend to push ourselves to the maximum, hoping to squeeze out a little more. We need space to think, to heal, and to worship. These moments give us opportunities to listen attentively as God speaks to us.
We are fragile. We weren’t created to be invincible, emotionless robots. Let’s look for spaces to rest, so that we’re not crushed by life.
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by Sabrina Jacques-Rowe
Communications Director, Henderson Highway Church