Learning the Value of Cake

When it comes to craft, there are two kinds of people: 

Those who are good at it.

And those who aren’t.

I fall firmly into the latter category.

I struggle to even thread a needle.

Which is why much of my GCSE applique was glued rather than stitched.

Which probably contributed to the fact that I didn’t get a very good grade.

Last week, however, I went to a craft evening and was surprised by the outcome of my efforts.

The result was not bad at all.

I attribute this to two things:

1.       It was nearly impossible to go wrong.

2.       There was lots of glue involved.

Our task that evening was to decorate a word shape.

In any way we chose.

The word was ‘love’.

We sat around a table, gluing and sticking and chatting.

By the end, we’d each produced a decorated word.

The same word as someone else.

But none looked the same.

We’d chosen to place the decorations differently.

Outwardly, each was unique.

But, underneath, the word itself remained the same.

Love.

When the evening was over, I looked at my still-dripping-with-wet-glue word, and I thought about how differently the same it was from the others.

Or, in our case, we were saying the same thing in different glue styles.

Differently the same.

Love.

One of my favourite quotes is:

Jesus said this.

And I think that part of loving one other is learning to recognise love in others.

Cake is a good example:

My Granny really enjoyed baking and cooking.

If I was going through a tough time, perhaps just home after a spell in hospital, she would often turn up unexpectedly with a cake she’d made for me.

Now, cake was the last thing I wanted.

But I learned that it wasn’t really about the cake.

It was Granny’s way of showing love to me.

And, as I learned to recognise that, the ‘unwanted cake’ became precious.

It would also be fair to say that baking someone a cake would rarely, if ever, be the first thing that popped into my mind if I wanted to show love.

Differently the same.

A couple of days after my creative endeavour, the glue finally dried.

I looked around for a shelf for my masterpiece and my gaze fell on the piano.

There was no music score there.

I rarely play these days.

Like a big gap, the music stand stood empty.

Love filled the gap.

Love’s good at doing that…