As a special “thank you” to the ladies in the leasing office at my apartment complex, I decided to bake muffins: blueberry, chocolate chip, banana nut, strawberry, ect. Being the master baker that I am, I went for the mixes that required the least amount of added ingredients and roughly the same baking temperatures. (Somewhere anyone who has baked a cake from scratch is groaning)
I am whisking and baking my little heart out…everything is going smooth as silk. And then it happened…I must have blanked out when setting the oven temperature for the lemon poppy muffins. That is the only way to explain how I could have selected a lower setting than what I needed. I pulled the tray out of the oven and everything looked fine….that is until I poked one of the lovely puffed muffins with a fork and watched it deflate like a sad little balloon. I think I even heard air hissing.
Just picture this for a moment: puffy muffin to flat muffin. Now picture SIX muffins like that. This goes right up there with my mashed potato fiasco. I was frustrated to no end, and yet still found myself doubled over laughing…a day to cherish for sure.
Do not even ask yourself if there is a point here, aside from self humiliation. I always have a point…eventually. Everyone one of us has been created and designed and commissioned for something greater than we can comprehend. We all have dreams and goals…we all aspire to be more. But there is a process in which to get from start to finish. Our walk of faith has steps, and these steps are ordered and prepared. Your path is laid out, but you still have to walk it out. Try and skip around it, and you will end up with a deflated muffin. At first glance, they looked just like the others…not too brown and mushroom fluffy. In fact they looked better- until you stick a fork in the side and let the air out.
Why didn’t my lemon poppy stand the pronged test? There was not anything inside to hold up…no foundation, no filling (2 Tim 3:5). Whether you are a Christian or not, every good thing (job promotion, college, sports, ect) has a path…do not get so impatient with the timetable that you try to play leap frog; you might just end up at the edge of a river with a scorpion asking for a lift…
Pen in Motion 