Farming and Baking a Cake

If you taste flour, salt, baking powder or cocoa ... well maybe not cocoa ;-), raw egg, or oil separately you would not like it very much. As you combine and beat the different ingredients together they begin to have a pleasing aroma to them and when you have completed your sifting and ready to bake the mixture it actually tastes good and smells good but it still is not ready. then the batter has to be fired, you know, baked in an oven. Soon your kitchen and whole house begins to have this amazing aroma all around it and soon with the just right amount of heat and time in the heat you go to the oven and open the door and there before you is this amazing creation with the perfect color and texture. The edge has pulled away slightly from the pan giving you a visual that your creation is done to perfection. Your cake, mmmmmmm. What started out as many different ingredients, some wet some dry some tasty and some not so tasty have now become this wonderful cake pleasing to both the eye and the palate.

That flour has really been through some stuff, first it was planted and was grown in a field. Then some machine came through and harvested the wheat or if you are a gardener maybe you planted it in your back yard and grow it your self. A 10x10 area of wheat will yeild anywhere from 10 to 25 loaves of bread. Once it grows and it has been cut, you gather it together and let it dry and turn nice and golden. Then you have to thresh it. Doing it by hand, you take bunches of it and beat it on the sides of a metal bucket or drum barrel, then winnow it to get the chaff out of it. There you have the best of it and are ready to mill it when you are ready to use it. To mill it it gets crushed and from this process you have the flour to make your cake or bread or whatever you use it for.
Well by this time I imagine you are wondering, ok what's you point?
We are much like this wheat. Much happens before we even begin, I left out all the soil preparation even though that is a vital part as well, but we are planted and we think we are doing really good, we grow and grow and think, well I am doing what I am suppose to be doing and then all of the sudden some thing or some one comes alongs and wacks you off right at your ankles and you fall to the ground, BOOM! Well then you are picked up and you rest for a bit think you are getting better and then BOOM! You get beaten around for a bit for you feel like you are losing part of who you are, but at this same time you notice you have taken on a new lightness and think well this is good I feel good and look good and am even more healthy and have a goodness for those around me. Then BOOM! Man like you never thought it could get worse you begin to feel this incredible crushing, you begin to think wow I don't think I can handle this and as you are press and rolled through this mill you emerge as flour, you think ok God now what are your plans for me I think I have done everything you have created for me to do. I was planted in the dirt, someone cut me off from that, then I was beaten senseless, then as if all this wasn't bad enough, I was grinded to this flour mess, now what? Or do I dare ask!
Every stage you felt as though you were there, you were in part of your destiny and every stage BOOM! But every time you continued and you perservered to endure, because you know your God and you know he knows you. But now you are this flour and you wonder what can I possibly do now, God how can you use me now?
Someone comes along and scoops you up and places you in the bowl with some other ingredients that have been through similar things and you go through this mixing process and yes then the heat, being fired to perfection.
Every phase of this process you have an aroma to God and a very pleasing one, just as to a gardener every stage of growth is a pleasing aroma. Breaking the ground, picking weeds, cutting and pruning, and harvesting and the things that come after. Every stage has an aroma.
The gardener or farmer has the bigger picture, he knows what the final result is, He sees it as he is breaking the ground. Just like God, he sees the final picture, everything we go through is a process, every step closer and closer to the bigger picture. He can see the destination, not just journey. That is how we make it through it all, with him, he sends of his spirit to be with us to get through it and continue on this journey this process to become what we were truely created for.
Not all of us were created to be cakes but we all have similar journeys and processes.
Hanging there and encouraging one another when we are going through the process is good.
I know it is hard to think of things when you are in the process but remember that God is pulling you through and He sees what you can not. He sees the cake even before the ground is broken.
He never leaves us, he is always with us. Always tending to us durnig all of this process. He never leaves us, even when we leave him, he is always there. Because HE SEES THE CAKE!
Blessings~