Cakes, Conscience, & Christ: Choosing Jesus

     I love chocolate!  If you were to look at my Facebook page right now, it has a picture of creamy milk chocolate in the shape of a heart as a background for my main page: 

Mom has this recipe for something called a "mayonnaise cake" that, in fact, doesn't taste like mayonnaise, but instead is one of the creamiest, chocolaty cakes ever made!  I saw a Garfield cartoon once where Garfield expresses his love of coffee, and by the last panel, he's actually in the cup bathing in it!  Please don't think I'm being literal when I say that this is how I feel about that cake!  I love chocolate in just about any form though:  Candy bars & M&M's, Lindt & Godiva truffles, chocolate chip cookies & dark fudge brownies, to name just a few!  

     And then there's chocolate cake, and the reason for this little commentary:  I've always seen a clear parallel between the recipe of a cake and, amazingly, the development of the human mind!  Have I gone off the deep end?  Just what do I mean by this?

     When a person bakes a cake, he or she usually follows a recipe, and takes all the ingredients, mixes them together, bakes it in an oven, and frosts it.  Humans are like that as well.  They start out a certain way – we’ll call it "Nature" – but it’s like a bunch of ingredients that don’t match everyone else’s.  These are the kinds of things determined by their genes and their DNA, and it’s why some babies are sleepy, rather quiet, and accepting, like I was, and some babies start out alert, vocal, and curious about the world, like my twin brother Terry tended towards.  They start out as a different set of “ingredients,” but that isn’t the only determining factor that will reveal the adults they will eventually become.  Experience changes them.  We’ll call this experience "Nurture", and it is akin to mixing the ingredients together, adding even more, baking it in an oven, and then applying the finishing touches.  

     Of course, I realize this analogy is fairly simplistic.  There are many more elements and variables that determine how a human being will turn out, and the end result actually doesn’t come close to being as easy to determine or see as a cake.  Humans are much more complex than a simple cake.  I mean, a cake is a cake is a cake, even if it didn’t turn out the way you might have liked, or the middle fell, or you forgot the eggs.  You can have a pineapple upside down cake, or a German chocolate cake, or even one of those monstrous, huge, gorgeous, and expensive cakes that the boisterous Buddy Valasco makes with his family and team of bakers on TLC’s Cake Boss, but in the end, it’s still just a cake.  People, on the other hand, are infinitely more complex!  Even Buddy!

     People usually aren’t just good or bad, but in a thousand different ways, they are both.  And I’ve realized over the years that some of the elements that have shaped me, and made me the man I am today, both Nature and Nurture – who I was when I was born and the experiences that have changed me – haven’t always changed me for the good.  I might wish that they have, but they haven't.  This is because we were all born into sin, and we all have a little bit of that inside of us, whether we choose to admit it or not.  I have come to understand that this world God made and put us in is a world of choices, and like all men and women, I have been given the free will to choose good or evil, righteousness or sin.  I’d be lying if I said all the choices I’ve ever made have been good ones – and so would any man or woman who has ever walked this earth.  Except for one, and His name is Jesus!  

     We are creatures of choice, and we can choose good, or we can choose evil.  It is our choice to wallow in sin or to rise above those baser things that change us for the worse.  I haven’t always chosen what is right and good, but it is my desire that I should, and it is what I continually strive for.

      And so my prayer to God is that He will always be there to help me make the right choice.  I pray that He will gently guide me during the times in my life when I seem to forget Him and forget myself, and become momentarily caught up in the devil’s snare.  It happens to us all.  Even the best of us can make blunders!

     God, don’t forget me as I have, at times, forgotten You.  Please don’t forsake me the way that I have, at times, forsaken You.  I’m only human, and like all of us, I was born in sin, and it is always there, and it is even a part of us.  But we can strive to choose something better.  I pray that, more and more, day after day, week after week, and year after year, that I will grow and become the man that You always wanted me to be. 

     I am a miserable sinner.  I realize this.  It seems I'm not the patient man I once was, and I am, at times, prone to anger or annoyance over things I shouldn't be angry or annoyed over.  I don’t deserve anything from You.  I ask for Your forgiveness.  I ask for Your help.  I ask for Your guidance.  I ask for Your wisdom.  I ask for Your grace.  I ask for Your love.  I ask these things with a heavy heart.  I’m sorry I am what I am.  I fall at the foot of Your cross.  I want Your help to be a better man.  Isn’t that how the healing begins, or begins again for those who need You yet again?  We all do.  We all sin and fall short of Your glory.  And yet there is Your saving grace, revealed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Your Blessed Son.  I call out to You God.  Heal my wounded, sinning heart.  You have given us the gift of choice.  Help me to always choose You in all things!

Take me, make me all You want me to be / That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking

Welcome to this heart of mine I've buried under prideful vines
Grown to hide the mess I've made inside of me / Come decorate, Lord
Open up the creaking door and walk upon the dusty floor
Scrape away the guilty stains until no sin or shame remain
Spread Your love upon the walls and occupy the empty halls
Until the man I am has faded / No more doors are barricaded

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home

Take a seat, pull up a chair / Forgive me for the disrepair
And the souvenirs from floor to ceiling gathered on my search for meaning
And every closet's filled with clutter / Messes yet to be discovered
I'm overwhelmed, I understand / I can't make this place all that You can

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home

Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home

I took this space that You placed in me, and redecorated in shades of greed
And I made sure every door stayed locked, every window blocked, and still You knocked

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home...

Take me, make me all You want me to be / That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking

            - “Welcome Home”

               Shaun Groves