The Divine Cake

By way of analogy a divine cake is the result of using divine ingredients, even though the work of obtaining the ingredients, mixing, pouring and baking is the work of imperfect mortals.

Most of us have at some time in our lives eaten a cake. Many of us have also probably made a cake at one time or another. Basic ingredients are necessary for this purpose. Basic ingredients include flour, baking powder, eggs, sugar and milk. Other ingredients depend much on the type of cake we want and may include spices, pieces of fruit, flavorings, nuts, etc.

Making a successful cake requires a good and trusted recipe, proper preparation, good equipment for mixing and baking and of course an oven for baking, though with certain cookware you can use a pan. No part of a recipe can be ignored and it is essential to follow the instructions to get the best result. To make a good cake you also need to use the right amount of each of the specified ingredients. Baking the cake at the correct temperature and for the right length of time is also important.

I have tasted many cakes during my lifetime. I can tell the difference between a good cake and one that doesn’t taste so good. In some cases I have eaten cakes that were more like puddings, some with soft and squishy parts in the middle and cakes that didn’t rise well enough that were hard and unpalatable to digest. I have also experienced eating cakes that were burned on the bottom and those that had little or no flavor.

Normally it takes one who is experienced to make consistently good cakes and I am sure that that goes also for all other manner of cooking. Practice makes perfect. Some cakes are indeed heavenly – personally I like Devils food cake – a rich chocolate experience that stimulates the senses and satisfies the palette, melting in the mouth and leaving the soul wanting for more.

If I were God I would want every woman in the Celestial Kingdom to be able to make a perfect chocolate cake like the ones I so much love to taste, perhaps a little as sumptuous as the venison that Isaac loved and which his son Esau made so well for him.

But here the analogy I wish to make about cakes has its limitations. The purpose of this story is that a cake is the sum total of its parts. A good cake requires all the right ingredients and that you follow the recipe and instructions. The same is true in spiritual principles.

At the end of our mortal lifetime we will have become the sum total of our earthly experiences, thoughts and actions. What the end result of our characters will be will very much depend on the recipe we have used, the ingredients of our daily lives and the manner in which we have followed the instructions of the handbook of life.

Put more simply, we can only reap the harvest of what we have sown.
Ingredients are an all important part of this development – and they are equally important as are also the recipe instructions. We often think that it doesn’t really matter where the ingredients we use come from. But that isn’t true. It does matter. Only divine ingredients can produce a divine cake – and these ingredients are available to use only from divine sources. Just as with any ordinary cake, divine ingredients have a price. We can only obtain them from a divine source and to get them we must be willing to pay the price for them.

Just as it is also necessary to place faith in any recipe we follow we must be prepared to have faith in the divine instructions that are given to enable us to produce the divine cake. This faith is the basis for everything productive that we can accomplish and forms the foundation on which we make our cake.

Another important principle also concerns the recipe. If we want a cake we must use a cake recipe. We cannot use a cracker recipe and make a cake. It may seem obvious to us all but that is what many of us try to do. We may be satisfied with whatever we do but at the end of our day of life we will measure our life success by our performance. And it will show.

If the cake represents our lives then it is important how we make it and it is important from where we get the recipe that we use and it is important that we follow the right instructions.

I have eaten some half baked cakes. I have eaten some cakes with burned bottoms and I have eaten some cakes made without the right ingredients and I can state categorically that they don’t taste good, they don’t often look good and they don’t create the kind of satisfaction that comes from making a successful cake.

It is true that there is no accounting for taste. At the height of student revolts in Paris in 1969 the President of France at that time, Charles de Gaulle almost in despair raised the question, “How can you govern a country that has 365 different kinds of cheese?”

We can all choose the recipe we want – we can choose which instructions to follow and we can choose how we follow those instructions but one thing is absolutely certain. When the cake is ready it will be the sum total of its parts and if it doesn’t fit the divine pattern for cakes it will be rejected in favor of those that do.