A Designed Life

A Designed Life

You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer.

Job 14:5

In 1991, aspiring newspaper editor Kevin Williams convinced Elizabeth Coblentz, an Old Order Amish wife and mother, to write a weekly cooking column called “The Amish Cook.” For more than ten years Elizabeth shared family recipes and discussed daily life on her Indiana farm with her husband, Ben, and their eight children and thirty-two grandchildren. When she passed away in 2002 from an aneurism, her daughter Lovina Eicher took over her column. The Amish Cook’s Anniversary Book is a compilation of columns that appeared through the years. Here is an excerpt from Elizabeth’s first column:

This has been a rushy morning, but enjoyable. We still have five girls here at home yet. Four went to work as usual. They all leave 6:00 to 6:30 A.M. The girls were all busy doing all my cleaning before they left. Working all together like this is what I call real family life. With no boys at home, the girls do the milking and other chores around the barn. We have one daughter and two sons married, and feel lucky to have five grandsons and five granddaughters. Guess we just don’t appreciate all our good health enough. The kitchen has the smell of freshly baked pies.

It was no coincidence that Kevin Williams met Elizabeth in her driveway that day. It was part of God’s plan for her life—for the lives of her readers. The circulation of Elizabeth’s column grew from one paper in 1991 to being distributed in more than one hundred at the time of her death.

Our days, too, are numbered. God alone knows the paths we’ll take. Sometimes our love is meant to be poured out over family and community, and sometimes God desires that our love be spread further than that. There’s no way to know where God will take us, but like Elizabeth, we’ll find joy in simply taking note of what God is doing in our daily lives and magnifying Him in the middle of it.

Dear heavenly Father, there is so much in my life that I take for granted. Help me to pause, look around, and find joy in daily life.