For many of us, Christmas is all about the food, and in the Wood family my sisters and I all celebrate our birthdays in December. Cake was in abundance and it is no shock that those sweet Decembers birthed in me an affinity for all things confectionery, especially cake frosting. This week for my birthday, a friend gave me a copy of a new cake cook book. If you are so inclined, check out All Cakes Considered and enjoy (I’m already one recipe ahead of you).
One of the things that I love about baking a cake is the utter transformation of a few lonely, humdrum ingredients into this amazing sweet, soft and delicious frosting delivery device.
Jesus and the apostle Paul both used food to talk about spiritual things and several times the bible talks about bread and yeast. But give me a bit of leeway here and let’s consider the preparation and baking of a cake as being an illustration of how God is changing your life and mine. We get tossed into this a pan of a new life in Christ, raw and kind of gooey. The gospel gives us all the ingredients for life abundant and eternal – His righteousness, a clean heart, justification, the Holy Spirit in us, etc. Yet, we are not mature, ready and fully formed to the shape and design of the pan. Then, this sticky bowl of potential and promise, is pushed into oven. Here, the refining work of heat and time does the hard work. It is that heat and time that ultimately brings about the change. As the timer buzzes, we come out of the heat and time of this life and are presented as mature, complete and perfect in Christ. Jesus saved us but it is the the fires and just the right amount of time in the oven changes us (and the cake) completely.
This week we celebrate worship and advent celebration is about the joy of Christmastime and the power of God to transform our lives, everyday. And remember, this joy isn’t about our happiness or an artificial smile on our faces, true joy is about God’s influence on our heart, no matter the circumstance. That’s where the heat and time come in. None of us truly enjoy the flames of suffering and the pressures of great change in our lives, and all of us are learning patience. But the joy of the reward and the promise of the harvest (of cake) is where God’s transformation power takes hold and works on us until completion. This process, though sometimes painful and at times it seems without end or reward, gives us true joy. God’s constant and certain transformation of those who belong to Him is something sweeter than any three layer chocolate cake.
Can’t you just taste it?
I’m not promising a piece of cake as we worship this week, but I am thrilled about God’s plans for our worship. We will hear stories of transformation, we will hear from our children about what God is teaching them, we will study God’s word and we will sing songs together. I hope you can join us this week and be excited about what God is doing to transform your life, everyday. Our set list for Sunday follows:
Roger Wood
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman) – One of the standards of our worship, Pastor Chuck mentioned it last week in his sermon. It’s not a Christmas carol, but this reminder of our joy and praise as God is transforming us and changing us is never out of season. The lyric is a lament but that attitude in our worship is one we can so easily overlook.
Feliz Navidad (Feliciano) This may seem an odd selection for our worship, but the simplicity of the bilingual lyric reminds us that our Christmas greetings and encounters should not be superficial. As believers, we need to take wishing someone a Merry Christmas from the “bottom of our hearts” as serious, kingdom business. It’s probably the one time of year that our daily encounters with coworkers, fellow students, friends, neighbors and complete strangers can be seasoned with salt and light. Greet someone with Merry Christmas from the bottom of your heart.
Angels We Have Heard On High (Barnes, Chadwick) – What great joy we know because of our Savior’s birth! We sing Gloria, in excelsis, Deo! We sing Glory to God in the Highest!
The Glorious Impossible (Cartee) – This is one of my new favorite seasonal classics and we will sing it a few times as Christmastime draws near. I first think it’s important you don’t misunderstand the title of the song. It’s poetic and a reference to a Madeleine L’Engle story title. Click on this link to read an interview where the songwriter discusses the “Glorious Impossible”. It isn’t that we are singing about how God can’t do something, we are praising God because he did the impossible, what we could never do for ourselves – He came to us and he redeemed us. In my opinion, few other songs capture this great truth and impact of the incarnation, and then carry that through to help us praise God for sending Jesus to suffer and die for us. The great news of the birth of our savior is meaningless unless we understand the Good News – that God sent Jesus to redeem us from sin by dying on the cross. And so we sing “Hallelujah”.
ShareThis