John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books , including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Coronavirus and Christ

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books , including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Coronavirus and Christ

Audio Transcript

Here’s a question from our good friend Gloria Furman, if it works, great. If not, no problem. Let’s hit record and see what happens. “Hi Pastor John, I think it’s great that you love Grape Nuts so much. When we were kids, my sisters and I would be made to eat Grape Nuts on occasion. We never appreciated it, so the parents ended up just buying those little boxes of cereal for themselves. Now that my cereal preferences have changed and I live in a country where there are no Grape Nuts, I have occasionally considered buying Grape Nuts to bring over in my suitcase. The boxes are small, but they are dense and heavy! Must be all that bulky fiber. This brings me to my question about how you eat them every day. If you eat them cold they are kind of gritty and take more time to chew. But if you eat them hot then they have a half soggy/half gritty effect. What is your preference?”

I am only willing to answer this question because I know who asked it, and she is a woman of substance, you might say, like Grape Nuts — though that probably does not sound like a compliment.

The answer is no. Soggy is not good. And dry crunchy is not good. But cold, milk crunchy, mingled with mini shredded wheats and Great Harvest, non-crunchy granola well-timed so that you don’t have squishy minis or warm milk: now that is the right kind of crunchy.

“Molasses and honey make everything candy.” Twitter Tweet Share on Facebook

But, really, there is another secret that makes this breakfast unsurpassed in pleasure and has kept me coming back for about thirty years and gets me out of bed in the morning with hope and beckons me home while I am jogging and makes me want to go to bed early at night, so that the morning will come faster with breakfast.

So, the secret is so special that I thought I would put it in limerick form, and I want to dedicate this limerick to Gloria Furman, a woman of substance, okay? Here is the limerick. Now, this is the secret that makes this breakfast what it is:

There once was a man who thought Grape Nuts were dandy.

While everyone else considered them sandy.

But you don’t eat them sola,

For the key is granola,

Because molasses and honey make everything candy.

That is the secret.