Let Them Eat Cake

How on earth will I ever explain this to Jon?

He will know the minute he walks into the house for the warm and welcoming scent that greets him will surely give away the secret that I've been baking. And so here I sit, not ten minutes after pulling it out of the oven, staring at the cake on my counter-top, trying to figure whatever possessed me to bake the darned thing in the first place and what possible plausible reason there might be to explain my actions.

Perhaps it was the already opened bag of chocolate chips in the pantry ...

Maybe it was the fact that I had a can of chocolate frosting leftover from Christmas goodie baking ...

It might have been just to give myself something to do for being in the kitchen and cooking up good things for my family brings me a lot of joy ...

And yet, none of these quite explains my sudden desire to bake a cake. No, the only real explanation for the cake is my own sinful nature. I want to be healthy, and yet I find myself doing things that don't result in healthy bodies. I want to keep my promise to my husband to help him be a physically healthy man, and still I struggle with a desire to bake him lots of sweets and treats. I want to help the kids grow into healthy adults who eat appropriate kinds and amounts of food, and yet I find myself giving them unhealthy food options on a regular basis.

Sigh ... That which I want to do I do not do. That which I hate, I find myself doing. It's on days like today that I simply despise having a sin nature, which is why it is good to recall that the Apostle Paul also struggled in this area:


We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

~Romans 7: 14-25

Now that the cake has had time to cool, I think I'm going to slice it up and let the girls deliver it to some of our neighbors. It's okay to bake as long as someone else eats the cake!