I love my wife’s chocolate-chip pound cake.
Love it. Love it.
There are so many great things about this cake:
The ingredients. When I see a bag of mini chocolate chips, sour cream, eggs, and a few other assorted items on the kitchen counter, I know good things are about to happen. None of it looks remotely like a cake, but the anticipation alone is tantalizing enough.
The cleanup. When my wife starts mixing the ingredients together and pours the batter into a pan, I try not to stray too far from the kitchen because “cleanup” is coming. Cleanup is one of the best parts because it involves licking the spatula clean of the bowl’s remaining contents. The batter doesn’t look very cake-like, but the taste of it is amazing, nevertheless.
The aroma. There is not a word in our language – “fragrance”, “aroma”, and certainly not “smell” – to describe what wafts wonderfully from my wife’s oven as the timer ticks down. To say that it is enticing is an understatement. It takes a certain amount of willpower not to yank it out of the oven and unashamedly consume the half-baked glory midway through. But I’ve learned over time to wait. The best is yet to come.
The presentation. The moment it comes out of the oven, I’m already reaching for a fork, yet the wait continues. There’s the cooling-off period, then the tipping out of the pan onto an appropriately elegant glass dish to showcase the culinary marvel. And then, the icing (oh, yeah)!
The consumption. Then, while the cake is still irresistibly warm, and the icing is running off in little delectable rivulets and pooling like an oasis around the edges, we eat! A tall glass of milk typically accompanies a slice of the long-awaited delight as it slowly and oh-so-pleasurably gets devoured.
The reminiscing. Okay, we haven’t quite gone that far yet, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. A scrapbook would probably be a little much…
As great as this cake is, and as wonderful as the anticipation can be, there’s something even better: you. No, that’s not a commentary on how you smell or what you look like. I’m talking about the inner working of God inside of you to make you look like Himself. This is your destiny and your purpose in Christ:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
– Ephesians 1:4
When you look at yourself, you may just see a jumble of thoughts, emotions, ideas, and experiences — a big bag of groceries at best — but nothing could be further from the truth. You may not realize it, but the Master Himself has plans to turn you into something extraordinary. He’s already paid a high price for you through the life of His Son, and He wouldn’t waste such a precious purchase. He is proudly crafting you into something even better than the world’s finest chocolate-chip pound cake. So whether you feel like a mixed-up mixture or a bowlful of batter — or maybe you’re just wondering how much longer you’ll have to sweat it out in the oven — don’t worry, God knows what He’s doing.
I’m staying close to the kitchen ’cause I just caught a whiff of something spectacular. Have you?