The Mirror of Our Soul

I once did my "cake talk" at a retreat.  Today, God has asked me to share it on my blog.  I pray that it doesn't lose something in translation since I cannot bake cakes for all of you to have a visual and taste enhancing experience.

Picture three cakes: an Angel Food, a Chocolate Cake, and a Plain Vanilla Cake with carmel like vanilla icing.  The later is a cake my grandmother, Minnie (Toad) Robeson always baked.  I will refer to it as Grandma's cake.  Think about this: "If you were a cake, which cake would you be?"

First let's talk about the Angel Food Cake--the one with the whipped cream icing and cherries on top.  It's such a pretty cake.  White poofy icing, bright red cherries to contrast.  But when you cut into the middle of the cake, you find lots of holes and a pretty rough texture.  It's a lot like some of us:  beautiful on the outside.  We seem to have it all together as far as the world can see, but our lives are full of holes.  Maybe the holes need to be filled by God.  Maybe we don't really even know Him, or maybe our relationship with His has taken a back burner.  Maybe we need love from our family, friends, or chruch that we are not getting.  Maybe we need to fix a broken relationship, or maybe we just need to feel good about ourselves.  Whatever hole this kind of person has, God knows and can fill it.

Then there's the Chocolate Cake. What can we say?  Beautiful outside, wonderful inside!  The Chocolate Cake person needs to be careful that we don't become so self sufficient that we don't see a need for God.  The danger here is allowing  our own strength to become our idol.   We become so sure of our abilities that we shut God out.  We may not do it consciously, but we can handle so much on our own that we forget to ask God what He wants.  Then we're really in trouble.

And last but not least, Grandma's cake.  Plain vanilla, falls in the middle, caramel icing that just lays there.  It's not the most beautiful cake in the world.  But that icing penetrates that cake and, on the inside that cake is so wonderfully sweet.  It is a good, solid, everday cake that you can count on to fill your craving for sweets.  The Vanilla Cake Person, though they may have a few lumps and bumps and sink holes on the outside, or may appear plain vanilla, is a wonderful person on the inside.  You can depend on her to fill the needs of family and friends, and oftentimes to be the workers at the church.

We need to be careful not to think ourselves less because we don't feel beautiful when we look in the mirror.  We need to not compare "cakes."  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and God sees all.  Whatever kind of "cake person" we are, God knows us inside and out.  He can fill our holes.  He can use our strengths and our weaknesses. He looks into the mirror of our souls, not the mirror on the wall.  We need to figure out which kind of "cake" we are, and ask God to work with and through the gifts He has given us.  We need to ask him to bring us to the point that, when we look into the mirror on the wall, all we see is the image of Him.