As a child, I loved helping my grandmother bake her homemade cakes, eagerly hurrying to the kitchen to assist anytime I knew she would be making one. She made the most delicious homemade coconut, pineapple, and banana cakes. I remember watching with anticipation as she gathered the ingredients she would need. Depending on which cake she was making, the ingredients varied slightly although from what I remember the basic ingredients for the cake itself remained the same. I remember her carefully measuring out each ingredient as she mixed together her recipe the exact way she wanted it. I also remember sneaking tastes of the different ingredients throughout the years.
I learned a lesson from these episodes of taste testing, which I’m sure many of you have learned for yourself. Many ingredients for the cake did not taste good by themselves. In case you didn’t already know, flour doesn’t taste very good by itself and just for the record, neither does shortening! Obviously, the sugar and some of the other ingredients tasted great but the truth is that it wasn’t until all the ingredients were mixed together that you finally got the good stuff. After she had mixed all the ingredients together and poured them into her baking pan, I got to do what I loved best about “helping” her bake. I got to “lick the bowl!”
I can still remember how sweet and delicious it tasted after she had carefully mixed all the necessary ingredients together. Those ingredients that had tasted so nasty by themselves, now blended together to make a delicious treat. I thought about this today when my daughter and I talked about Romans 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” I explained to her and maybe to myself as well, that life is like my grandma’s cake sometimes. Taken by themselves, some things don’t often taste so good but in the end, when it all gets mixed together, it turns into something good.
There are many things in life that are hard to swallow and don’t taste very good by themselves. However, if we wait on the One who is bringing all the ingredients together, then things will eventually turn out alright. Sometimes we have to trust and believe that this bitter thing we are going through will somehow be used for our good. I don’t know why some things happen the way they do, and I don’t know why God allows certain “ingredients” into our lives. I do know that I have seen Him use some pretty rough “ingredients” in my life to eventually make something beautiful. Dear heart, when life gets hard, I’m learning to trust Him to work things out for good.
While that doesn’t mean that everything is going to be good, it does mean that if I trust Him and continue to seek His purpose for my life, He will eventually use it all for good. So, when the hard times come, I remember my grandma’s cake and remind myself that while I may not like the taste of this “ingredient”, I can keep trusting Him to bring something good out of it. I remind myself that sometimes it takes some nasty tasting ingredients to make something beautiful, something sweet, and when all this finally gets mixed together just the way He knows it needs to be; I’ll be the masterpiece that He has planned for me to be all along!
Katrina Douglas
