Pressure cooker

I've always been amazed by different culinary practices, of how food is prepared. When i had time to cook I fried, baked, boiled, broiled, grilled, all kinds of meals. One thing I have never used in the kitchen is a pressure cooker. I've wondered what effect a pressure cooker has on meat and vegetables, but from what i understand it usually is used to cook quicker but sometimes slower depending on the pressure.

Isn't it the same in our lives. We all live under some kind of pressures, sometimes the pressure is higher than at other times. Pressure is something that can help us perform and accomplish things, but we can also be consumed by too much pressure. It can detrimentally effect our performance and health, and cause irreputable damage.

God seems to have created us with some kind of natural pressure. All of us (who are still breathing) have a blood pressure reading, some have low blood pressure, some high, (neither extreme is good). In recent years I have concluded that there's probably a direct correlation between life's pressure and blood pressure (at least in my life). When blood pressure hits 222/124 the alarm bells ring, as we run the risk of something giving in our bodily functions. Just like a furnace, pressure needs to be controlled in order not to blow a valve or pipe somewhere in the system.

So why is it that when we are under pressure, we continue to load our lives with more pressure? We take on more tasks, responsibilities and burdens. We think of ourselves as pressure cookers, who can produce more in less time than normal. But what's the quality of pressure cooked lives? Perhaps taking more time to do things brings brings better quality,... maybe by doing less we can accomplish more.... or maybe we are just interested in seeing how much our personal pressure cooker can handle before blowing our top off...

12 February 2009