No Milk Today

Just inside the door of our pantry is a small blue lettered sign that reads “No Milk Today”. It caught my eye recently and took me back to the days when milk was delivered to homes by a milkman driving a specialized truck. The practice went on well into the eighties. That would account for about twenty years of our marriage. I still miss the convenience. Milk tickets were purchased and left with the empty bottles outside the door. When bottles fell into disfavour and disuse, the tickets were left in an envelope in a pre-appointed spot. The milkman knew exactly the demands of any given household and would make sure that the correct amount of whatever was used was indeed delivered daily. On the occasions that milk was not wanted, the “No Milk Today” sign was posted usually in the living room window to alert the milkman to the fact that no milk was to be left that day. Indeed there was an assumption that milk was to be delivered unless the process was halted by the sign.

The sign also evoked in me another memory. As a principal of an elementary school, I remember receiving a call from a concerned neighbour informing me that one of our kindergarten students, after disembarking from the school bus, was hanging around in her backyard obviously locked out of her house. In those days, kindergarten was a half day program and the morning class was dismissed at 11:30 A.M. in order to be bussed home. The temperature was about thirty-five below on that January day. The neighbour, who was known to the school and indeed a parent of an older student, offered to bring the child into her home until mother arrived home. I asked her to have the mother call me as soon as she arrived home in order to investigate if the bus driver had made an error in judgement in allowing a five year old off the bus with nowhere to go. There was indeed an error in judgment, but it was not the bus driver who was totally at fault. This mother and the bus driver had a private agreement that when the “No Milk Today” sign was in the window, the child was to be dropped at grandmother’s house further along the bus route. When the sign was not present in the window, the child was to be left at home. Indeed the sign not had been in the window that morning. Mother had in her haste forgotten to place it in the window!

The “No Milk Today” sign also brings to mind the words of the author of the Book of Hebrews in chapter 5 and verses 12 to 14.

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

These words are written, not for the new Christian, but for those of us who should have some maturity and wisdom in our journey with God. Some of us never move from the milk that a baby Christian needs to the solid food which represents the mature study and understanding of the Word of God, which inevitably leads to submission and obedience. Some are content to just believe and remain with the basics like God loves me and forgives me. They are indeed saved, but missing so much of the richness that can come of a relationship with the Lord based on adult “solid food” study of the Word of God. If you are one of these mature Christians who is still drinking the milk of the basics, I suggest you put up your “No Milk Today” sign and get on with your relationship with our God and His Son.

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