Cake

For the first time in about 50 years, I made a cake! I used to make cakes when I was at school. We had “Home Economics” lessons in those day and I was a pretty good at making a lemon cake, or an orange cake. I even entered them for competitions. I don’t think I ever won one, but that wasn’t the point. The point was making a cake. But I haven’t made a cake since those days. I have never watched Bake Off (if that’s the programme where people make cakes) or any other baking programme for that matter. I’ve been more than happy to allow others to exercise their baking gifts and be the one who eats it for them! I decided to make a cake for a birthday, for someone who thinks a Betty Croker cake (that’s a cake mix cake for the uninitiated) isn’t a proper cake. So I got my Mary Berry cake making instructions, the ingredients and my enthusiasm, and made a cake. It looked great when I took it out of the oven, but some time later when the two parts of the Victoria sponge had cooled, it looked a little different. Perhaps a little disappointing even! I applied the jam and cream as per the instructions and mused as to why my cake didn’t look like the one with the Mary Berry instructions. Perhaps I had been over generous with the jam and cream. Almost certainly! But then a cake with jam and cream dripping out of the middle has a certain allure about, or at least that’s what I like to think. Everyone was very kind and said it tasted good. And it did. And everyone loved that I’d taken the time to make a cake after a 50 year lay off. But…and here’s the rub, my perfectionist tendencies were disappointed that it wasn’t perfect. Whatever that means about a cake. Well, it didn’t look quite like the one in the picture for starters. Years ago I would have wanted to throw it away because it wasn’t perfect. But not this time. We enjoyed the cake and laughed at the jam and cream spilling from the middle. And here’s the the thing I’ve been reflecting on all week: a perfect cake was never the point of me making a cake. It wasn’t about the cake at all. It was about moving towards someone else. It was about recognising that a small action that I could take, might make a big difference to someone else. The fact that I’d chosen to make a was what was important. How the cake turned was almost irrelevant. How many times, I’ve wondered, have I been put off doing something because I’m worried it might not turn out “perfectly” when all that was really required was to move towards someone. The life of Jesus shows that God is always moving towards his imperfect creation. Which is good news for people like me, who sometimes start things that don’t turn out as we’d hoped. God moves towards me anyway.