Batter Up
My mom is not Betty Crocker, but I think the two were close friends. My mom just made the best cake you could eat, period. She had the pudding in the mix before you could buy pudding in the mix. We are talking about moist chocolate cake dripping with homemade frosting and tons of calories.
She was, and still is, on everyone’s short list for birthday cakes, party cakes, and wedding cakes. This equated to a whole lot of bowl lickin’ for me. The cake batter was the best you could scrap out of a bowl or lick off the beaters.
I caught myself remembering these tasty treats as my kids continue to explore their culinary creativity. They are into the Lemon Lush, the fancy-smancy cheesecake, funny breads (ok, you have zucchini bread, but now there is pumpkin bread, rice bread, tapioca bread, and all sorts of “other breads”), and whatever else these adventurous, recipe explorers can concoct.
The kitchen has become like a playground, though one with delicious rewards waiting to be found in all the individual ingredients. Their activities with mixing, beating, kneading, picking eggshells out of the batter, and cleaning up is almost as much fun to them as eating the results of their efforts.
Of course, the clean up is just as scrumptious as I remember from my childhood. I taught my children the fine art of licking the beaters, getting both the outside and inside of the blade in one glide of the tongue. I know Ms. Manners will not approve, but we found the lost talent of finger cleaning the bowl and then tongue cleaning the fingers. While their mixtures may not compare to Mom’s batter, they thoroughly enjoy the fun with chocolate or cream cheese smeared all over their faces, in their fingernails, and sometimes a good lot on the kitchen counter.
I know some readers may cringe and remark about our kids getting sick on too much sugar, raw eggs in the batter, and germs on their hands, but we enjoy our tasty treats – and so far, we all seem to be ok. These are great memories we will cherish just as I do my childhood batter licking recollections.
My wife and I value our relationship with our children. We love our two daughters and son. We love to hear their voices, their running feet through the house, their late night giggles when they’re supposed to be sleeping, and all their funny games and shenanigans. When they tell us they love us, it touches a special place in our hearts reserved only for them.
This gives me a small clue, just a fraction mind you, of what God must feel when we turn to Him as His children and share our love with Him. How awesome it must be for Him!
The revelation of our relationship with God as His children is throughout the Bible, specifically in 1 John 3:1 where it is written, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are…”
We become God’s children when we come to Him through His son, Jesus Christ. This is His desire, and has been His plan for all of us. We find this proof in Ephesians 1:4-5, “Long ago, even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave Him great pleasure.”
This is an expression of God’s love for us. His desire to draw us near to Him, even though He knows our past and our sins, is a reflection of the unending and ultimate love He has for each one of us – no matter how bad we think of ourselves. He is our Father in Heaven and our Creator.
I am still amazed by this revelation. This entire concept is almost beyond my simple comprehension. Yet He remains patient with me, just as I was patient with my children and picked the eggshells from my bite of cake (chocolate cake is not supposed to be crunchy). Fortunately, God’s patience far exceeds my own, as does His love.
As a father to three beautiful children, I am grateful for the tiny, miniscule taste of what He must experience in His love for us – a taste that is far much better than the best cake batter in the world!
Do you know God’s love for you in this way?
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Glenn Sasscer
www.glennsasscer.com
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