My 4-year-old, being always interested in how things work, pulled his stool over and glanced into the mixer. “Ew, that looks gross!” He said, scrunching up his nose.
Honestly, I didn’t think it was “gross” but nor would I want to eat it at that point. So I told him to wait until we were finished. It wasn’t done yet.
My kids love to bake with me, which is awesome because I love to bake! And it turns into a great way to teach math and science concepts under the guise of helping mommy cook. This week we were making banana bread. It was a slightly different recipe than I usually use as my Nana’s version is packed away in storage at the moment. This recipe started by mixing the butter with sugar until it is light and fluffy.
The next steps involved all the other wet ingredients to be mixed in another bowl. Eggs were broken, yolks were separated, and fragmented eggshells carefully removed before adding it to the mashed bananas, vanilla, and whatever other ingredients were needed. By the time these were mixed together, my son made another face. “That’s disgusting!”
And it was. Nothing looks good covered in gooey egg. “Yes, it looks disgusting now, but we’re not done. You have to wait until it’s finished.”
We add this to our butter and mix again. “I am not eating that!” He proclaimed, pulling another face at the concoction.
“You will like it when it’s done. You need to wait.”
Finally, the mixture was complete and the batter poured into the bread loaf pans. While he still said it looked “terrible”, he did not shy away from licking the beaters and trying to stick his head in the bowl to get up any other little bits of banana bread batter left behind.
Once the banana bread was finished baking and was just barely cool enough to eat, he gobbled up his slice and asked for more. While the baking process was “disgusting” and “terrible”, the final product was delicious!
And I thought about how this is like our lives. There are points in my life where if you looked in the bowl you would say, “that’s horrible” or “I don’t like that”. But the Baker (God) wasn’t done with me yet. He’s still not.
So remember that when you peak into the bowl of someone else’s life (or even when you glance at your own), you are only seeing one step in the recipe, one point in the process. And sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes it’s a disgusting mess. But God isn’t finished yet. Trust Him and let Him keep working so that he can bring something sweet out of all that goo.
“…being confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
Love this!! So true