Joshua Crawford
One of the simple joys of life is receiving your favorite cake on your birthday. The first slice is so delicious and gratifying, as is the second, usually had for breakfast the next morning. By the third slice, it’s not nearly as special and the fourth and fifth servings are reluctantly eaten as to not be wasteful. It’s interesting how something so special loses its appeal through over-indulgence. Life, just like our diet, isn’t designed to be sweet all the time.
In Scripture, this concept reveals itself again and again. Abraham, whom God called “my friend,” (Isaiah 41:8) was as deserving of God’s best treatment as any human. However, Abraham’s life is a mixture of flavors, not just sweet. Abraham received a blessing when God told him, “I will make you a great nation…” (Genesis 12:2) but soon ran into a famine where God sent him, so he went to Egypt (Genesis 12:10). He was chased out of Egypt by Pharaoh because he told the lie insisting his wife, Sarah, was actually his sister. (Genesis 12:20) After this, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, goes his own way right into the most wicked city of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Genesis 13:11) In Genesis 14:8-16, we read about Abraham waging war just to rescue Lot and his family. Abraham’s life is hardly a piece of cake.
The 15th chapter of Genesis shows the great covenant God makes with Abraham, “Look toward the heavens, and number the stars, if you are able to number them…so shall your offspring be.” (v. 5) Genesis 16 tells the story of Abraham hurrying God’s process along, leading him to have an illegitimate child with his servant, creating much tension between he and Sarah. Eventually, in Genesis 21, God does deliver a son to Abraham, named Isaac, but in the next chapter, Genesis 22, God asks him to sacrifice the child on a mountain. Before the sacrifice is made, God provides another sacrifice and promises, “…in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” (v. 18) Wow, that’s certainly a life full of various flavors – sweet, sour, and everything in between.
If life were cake every day, wouldn’t life lose its special appeal? Wouldn’t the sweet things of life become trivial and meaningless? In Ecclesiastes 3:1, Solomon says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Just as healthy vegetables contain the nourishment we need but not the flavor we want, the trials of life, though undesired, give us the lessons and wisdom we need to flourish. Do we trust what God places on our table?
Romans 8:29 Ministries 
Those who go to the mega churches with a constant diet of “feel good” about yourself, need to study the Bible. This analogy of the ;piece of cake brings out the truth. Reminds me of Ecclesiastes 7:14–“In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the say of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. Note the phrase,, GOD HATH SET THE ONE OVER AGAINST THE OTHER.” King David was afflicted. That is not a piece of cake, but a sore trial. Yet he said, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray. The God of all wisdom knows when and how to afflict His children for their GOOD, whether it is a measure of chasetisment because of straying into sin, or when it is a PREVENTIVE measure to KEEP us from sin. Life if not “a piece of cake.” Life needs the bitter as well as the sweet; the sorrow as well as joy. Normally our human natures are such that we don’t deal deeply with the Lord unless we are made to cry for deliverance. And we don’t do that without a storm. Study Psalm 107. Only with the felt sense of being a LOST sinner will one cry for forgivness from the merciful God.–Glen Berry
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