Volume 28, No. 18
 May 25, 2003                        

Message In A Bottle

   It was a saucy response to great adversity.

   As the Civil War raged on in 1862, successful New Orleans banker Edmund McIhenny fled the advance of the Union Army with his wife, Mary.  They escaped to Avery Island, a six-mile circle of salt deposits just off Louisiana’s Cajun coast where Mary’s family owned some mining operations.  The island was America’s first salt mine and still produces more than a million tons of the mineral every year.
 
  But during the Civil War, salt was vital in preserving meat for the troops so the Union forces invaded Avery Island and took over the mines.  Though McIhenny narrowly escaped to Texas, he returned home after the conflict to find his mansion and plantation destroyed.  The only thing that had survived was a crop of capsicum hot peppers.

   Determined to make some money, the businessman used vinegar to devise a spicy sauce that also contained Avery salt and chopped capsicum peppers marinated in wooden barrels for several days.  When the liquid was siphoned off into old, discarded cologne bottles, McIhenny had 350 units ready for sale.

   A year later, he sold several thousand bottles at a dollar apiece and soon had to open a London office to handle the huge European demand for his Cajun concoction. He called it Tabasco Sauce after Mexico’s Tabasco River, because he liked the sound of the name.  Today, the company sells 50 million two-ounce bottles of Tabasco Sauce annually in the U.S. alone.  McIhenny’s original recipe can now be found in more than a hundred countries, and 100,000 tourists visit Avery Island every year to see how the Southern sauce is made.

     The story of Tabasco Sauce is a message in a bottle, in the sense that we can use its principles when turmoil touches our own lives.  That’s because trouble of any kind always involves loss, whether it’s a loss of love, money, faith, confidence or even innocence.

   So when something happens that shakes us to the very core, we have only two choices.  We can mourn our loss in a painful paralysis that holds us captive to what might’ve been, or should’ve been.  Or we can move on, intent on learning from the experience so it can make us stronger and more compassionate toward others who will one day grapple with the same problem.

   Just remember that, whenever it seems we’ve lost everything we once took confidence in, God always leaves us something we can use to rebuild our lives and reshape our identity more into Christ’s image.  At first, it may not seem like much.  But if we’ll use our version of McIhenny’s capsicum peppers, He’ll help us transform them into something that will bring an entirely new zest and flavour into our everyday circumstances.  

   “Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy,” says James (1:2).  Not happiness, but joy — that deeper sense of peace and security that comes of knowing Jesus will see you through.  Unlike happiness, which can never coexist with unhappiness, joy can and usually does intermingle with sorrow, forming a poignant but potent mixture.

   If you can’t find your figurative peppers, or you don’t know what to do with them, ask for faith and wisdom.  “If you... want to know what God wants you to do, ask him and He’ll gladly tell you.  He won’t resent your asking” because “when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow!  And when your endurance is fully developed, you’ll be strong in character and ready for anything.” (1:3-5)

   Just dig out your old cologne bottles — those discarded values and opportunities that once seemed gone forever — and let the Lord fill them with the powerful, pungent insight that comes only after great struggle.  It’ll add a whole new flavour to your life.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca