The fellowship meal we enjoyed in August reminded me of one of my favorite pot luck dishes. The recipe for Sweet and Sour Beans was discovered in the “crowd pleasers” section of a cooking magazine.  

This recipe calls for a variety of beans; kidney beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas and lima beans. A word about lima beans, lima beans was the vegetable that even Mom didn’t like and she likes everything. Yet, in this recipe the lima beans are an important ingredient. I didn’t learn to appreciate black-eyed peas until I married into the Emerson clan. Another interesting component of this recipe is that it calls for both sweet and sour; brown sugar and vinegar.

This recipe is a lot like our life in Christ. It takes a wide variety of experiences and people to cook up something good in our lives; some we don’t like and others we are uncertain about because we’re not familiar with them. And in life we experience both the sweet and the sour. This recipe calls for a cup of brown sugar, but only a ¼ cup of vinegar. We all know that a little sour goes a long way, however the good stuff is far more plentiful in our lives than bad.  

Because of what Christ has done, is doing and continues to do in our lives, may all our life experiences continue to cook up something good in our lives.

In a large skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove to paper towels. Drain, reserving 2 tablespoons drippings. In the drippings, sauté onions until tender. Add brown sugar, vinegar, salt, mustard and garlic powder. Bring to a boil. In a slow cooker, combine beans and peas. Add onion mixture and bacon, mix well. Cover and cook on high for ¾ hours or until heated through. Yield: 15-20 servings.