Coming through North Little Rock, a group of us family members decided to stop in at The Black Bear Diner in North Little Rock. I had never been there and discovered this to be an excellent choice for eating out. I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone. As I looked over the menu, I saw they offered a huckleberry milkshake or malt. “How unique!” I thought. I had hardly even thought about huckleberries since I was a kid, much less to find them offered on a menu. When I was a kid, Dad would take us out to open areas in the woods to pick huckleberries. They are sort of like a wild, smaller version of a blueberry. I remember we would come out of the woods with a Mrs. Tucker’s Shortening bucket full of blueberries, and with a body covered in chiggers. I remember seriously considering if the pleasure of eating the berries was worth the misery of the chigger bites. It worked out best if you just keep scratching while you enjoyed the pie or jam or whatever the huckleberries were made into. Back to the Black Bear Diner; I had a salmon dinner, which was good, and I sampled a bite of steak offered from another person at the table. It was thin-sliced and seasoned with garlic and some other herb or spice, and it, too, was uniquely delicious. So, I had never seen huckleberry offered on a menu, and I don’t think I had ever had steak with garlic and whatever herb on it. I determined we would have to make a return trip to sample some other items from their menu with their generous portions. When you find something good, it does not take a lot of effort to share it with others. After sixty years of being with the Lord, I have become convinced that the reason so many “Christians” do not freely share the Lord is because they have never really partaken of His love, forgiveness, healing and infilling with life and power. Reality: we can have religion without a relationship. Relationship comes with understanding combined with total commitment and surrender. My wife has this saying: You can sit in a hen house for twenty years, but that does not make you a chicken. Powerless religion stems from no personal relationship. We can be good but not truly connected with God. Connection with God comes by understanding our heart condition before God, and understanding that what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross is the only thing that makes us right with God. When we see this, and we turn to Him, surrendering our life to Him, surrendering our goodness and our badness to Him, we experience a change of heart. We become a partaker of the menu, not just an observer. When we become a partaker of the spiritual bread and wine of Jesus Christ, we realize how good it is, and we overflow, telling others about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Huckleberries and Chiggers
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