Falling apart

Falling apart

Up and at ‘em early this morning with a big to-do list stretching across the pad. Soured cream in the fridge needed using up, so I thought I’d quickly whip up a cake for a family I wanted to give something to. I took extra care reading the directions and even put breadcrumbs in the Bundt cake pan. I’ve had trouble extricating them before from that pan, and that was the suggestion on the recipe so I did it.

Used the right flour, large eggs, added the ingredients in the right order, beat it the required amount. Into the pre-heated oven, set the timer and hey-presto, not even 9 am and ready to tick something off the list! 

I used the baking time to settle into the prayer alcove and have some quiet time with God. Read Psalm 86, all about trusting God who is faithful. Read it again. And again in a different version, thinking of all those situations and people who are on my heart just now. Holding them before God and doing my best to trust him with the lot.

Well, then the cake was done and as I took it out I suddenly thought I needed to cool it upside down, balanced on the Worcestershire sauce bottle stuck through the hole in the middle. Only I didn’t. I shouldn’t have. That is for an angel food cake, not for a cake in a pan which has breadcrumbs on it to keep it from sticking.

Because sticking is something it certainly didn’t do. As I tipped it upside down, it shot out of the pan like a child on a water slide and broke into four or five chunks. Hot chunks. 

Now my dilemma is: do I know this family well enough to take them a cake which has experienced a catastrophic tremor? Or should I slice it and arrange the slices on a plate so nobody needs know? Whatever happens, given all the Easter eggs and birthday cake and hot cross buns around here I definitely don’t want any of it left for us to eat!

So I went for a walk. Always good to walk when you don’t know what else to do. And I thought about the recipe. It didn’t say to turn the cake upside down to cool. But I ignored that. Well, I never even looked at that part of the recipe because I’d already stored it away on the bookshelf by then. I just thought I knew what to do. I am an experienced baker. I know what I’m doing. Hah.

Life is like that. At my age, I am an experienced live-er, but one who still needs to consult the Maker’s recipe often. I think I know how God wants me to live. But irritations crop up and I find I am thinking unkind thoughts, lacking in grace and love. I need to get back into that recipe book called the Bible and be encouraged, rebuked, enlightened, reminded of the high expectations God has of me.  And be filled with the Holy Spirit again so I might just manage to achieve some of them.

If my life is to finish neatly, I need to keep reading the Bible to get the recipe right, or I will fall apart like my cake did this morning.