Those
of you who follow blogs regularly know they use Guest Bloggers from time to
time and I am doing so today in a different sort of way. I just spent a
fabulous weekend at a church retreat with an incredible group of women. One of
my friends there, Jo Stair, sent me a story which she said went ‘round on the
Internet some years ago. I’d never seen it and it tickled me so, I just had to
share it. Jo laughed when I asked her if I could use her as a Guest
Blogger and said, “Sure. It’s not a very spiritual message perhaps but still
pretty interesting!”
Have
you ever told a white lie? Alice, new to the community, was to bake a cake for
the Baptist Church Ladies’ group but she forgot until the last minute. She
remembered the morning of the bake sale and after rummaging through cabinets,
she found an angel food cake mix. She quickly made it while drying her hair,
dressing and helping her son, Bryan, pack for Scout camp.
However,
when Alice took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the
cake was horribly disfigured. She realized there was no time to bake another
cake and tried to figure out what to do next. This cake was particularly
important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church and
community of new friends. Being inventive, she looked around for something to
build up the center of the cake. She found a roll of toilet paper, plunked it
in and covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful,
it looked perfect!
Before
leaving the house to drop the cake by the church and go to work, Alice woke up
her daughter, Amanda and gave her some money. She also gave her very specific
instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9:30 and buy this
cake and bring it home. When Amanda arrived at the sale, she found that the
perfect cake had already been sold! Amanda grabbed her cell phone and called
her mother. Alice was horrified. Everyone would know! What would they think of
her? She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed.
That
night she lay awake, thinking about people pointing fingers behind her back.
The next day she promised herself she would try not to think about the cake.
She would attend the fancy luncheon-bridal shower at the home of a friend of a
friend and try to have a good time. She didn’t really want to go because the
hostess was a real snob who had more than once looked down her nose at Alice.
Alice was a single parent and not from one of the founding families of the
town. Having already RSVP’d though, she could not think of a believable excuse
to stay away.
The
meal was elegant and the company definitely upper crust Old South. To Alice’s
horror, the cake in question was presented for dessert! Alice felt the blood
drain from her body when she saw it brought in. She started out of her chair to
rush to the hostess and tell her what was about to transpire. Before she could
get to feet, however, the Mayor’s wife commented, “what a beautiful cake!”
“Thank
you,” the snobby hostess replied. “I baked it myself!”
Alice
sat back down and smiled. “God is good!”
Psalm 119:103
Laura L. Valenti, author
The Heart of the Spring,
The Heart of the Spring Lives On,
The Heart of the Spring Comes Home, and
The Heart of the Spring Everlasting
Between the Star and the Cross: The Choice and
Between the Star and the Cross: The Election
Ozark Meth: A Journey of Destruction and Deliverance with co-author Dick Dixon
Between the Star and the Cross....we know that Jesus had 33 years between the Star at his birth and the Cross at his death. We each have a time between our star and our cross, we just don't know exactly how long ours might be. The more important question is, what will you do with yours?
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