As A Family We Recently Made Use Of A Disposable ...

As a family we recently made use of a disposable barbeque. We’ve owned proper barbeques in the past but we haven’t had one for a few years so when my wife suggested a few weeks ago that I should barbeque some burgers in the garden I remembered that we had a few disposable barbeques in the garage. Now, I’ve never been that great at barbequing. I usually burn things, but a few burgers, just four in fact, seemed like no problem. So, I took the disposable barbeque out of its packaging, read through the instructions, placed it on a solid surface, and tried to light the barbeque. After five matches, I rechecked the instructions and noticed it said, ‘Shield the barbeque from wind, especially whilst lighting.’ So, I moved it away from the wind onto another solid surface. There was no wind and it lit quickly. Within 15 minutes the barbeque was ready for cooking.

I put the burgers on and turned them after a few minutes and they were looking and smelling really good. In fact I was really pleased with myself because in the past I’ve always burnt the burgers. My son Matthew was pleased and he was looking forward to cooking marsh mellows over the heat. It wasn’t long before the burgers were ready. I lifted each one off and placed them in a bun, leaving one to finish off. We began to eat, but two minutes later we looked and the barbeque looked like it was on fire. Flames were everywhere, so not wanting to live up to my burger-burning reputation I lifted the remaining burger out of the flames, and placed it in a bun whilst my son Matthew ran into the kitchen and returned with a large bowl of water. We looked at the burning barbeque, surveyed the melting wax of the garden table I had placed the barbeque on, and proceeded to throw water over it. No one was hurt but the fumes were fowl. I had read – and ignored - the instruction saying ‘do not place the barbeque on anything flammable.’

‘Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says’ (1:22). ‘Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world’ (1:27).