Heat and Serve is bad Enough in a Restaurant

There are a lot of really poor restaurants out there, some of them chains and some of them independents.  They take a prepared product straight from the freezer to the deep fryer or oven, slap some canned sauce on it, and serve it to you as if you couldn't buy the exact same crap at the supermarket and throw it in your own oven at home.  Heat and serve.

We can criticize the common eatery for outsourcing, thawing, deep-frying and broiling in a bid to fill the gullets of the masses for a measly profit, but here are some areas in our own lives in which we should avoid it.

Social Media - we heat and serve opinion when we take what others have written and serve it up thoughtlessly.  It's bad when some tweet other's blog posts minutes after the original is posted EVERY time, it's worse when Facebookers attempt to shame each other into turning their status into a PSA (Public Service Announcement).  Create your own damned cause!  Drop me as a friend if you can't handle that I refuse to copy and paste your status for an hour.  We'll both get over it.

Our Vocations / Careers - if you're going to open a restaurant dammit, do it because you love to serve wonderful food to really nice people.  The same goes for our careers, figuratively speaking.  If it's truly a career, and not a 40 year job, do it because you love to do it.  Don't heat and serve someone else's watered down dreams just for a crummy paycheque.  Like eating in a mediocre roadhouse, sometimes you have to until you can do better.  Just don't fool yourself that it's fine dining, that it's nutritious, or that you won't end up with a fat ass.

Love and Friendship - there's another human being involved.  She or he deserves better than warmed over platitudes and self-serving afterthoughts.  He or she deserves better than a "can I take your order" attitude, or "cheque please!" response the first time the going gets tough.  Take the time to work up an appetite, to savour the moment, to glory in a shared meal and to dream about it long afterwards.

Our Faith, or Lack Thereof:  Our Relationship with God - specifically with Christ.  Embrace him or reject him - your choice, but do it whole heartedly and live with the consequences.  Don't heat and serve tasteless blather and call it prayer, don't slop out banalities about inner spirituality or outer atheism unless you've taken the time to personally prepare the dish.  After all, you'll be eating it for eternity.

Ordering!