I always enjoy making my children’s birthday cakes. I love the creative process, and I love their enthusiastic reactions to my creations. Even when a cake doesn’t turn out perfectly, it usually turns out pretty well, a cake I can be proud of.
That’s why it’s difficult for me to let my children help decorate cakes. When Jessica asked if she could help decorate the cake and cupcakes for her recent party, I’ll admit that I hesitated before saying yes. I could do better, I thought.
The point, of course, is not who decorates better, so of course I let Jessica (and Lindsey) help. I told them they could decorate the cupcakes, and I would do the cake. They set to work cheerfully and enthusiastically, slathering blue frosting on the cupcakes and applying sugar and sprinkles. Hiding in the kitchen with Phil, I watched them at work at the dining room table.
The blue frosting wasn’t even. The sprinkles weren’t even. The cupcakes looked like two little girls were decorating them. (What if someone thinks I decorated them? I wondered briefly.) “It’s hard for me to let them do it so imperfectly,” I said to Phil.
And then I thought to myself, I wonder if this is how God felt when He entrusted the spread of the gospel to mere human beings?
God had an important message He wanted—and still wants—to get out to the world. He’s a far better communicator than we are and could have done a fantastic job of spreading His message all by Himself. Yet He chose to entrust it to imperfect human beings who couldn’t do it as well as He could.
Beginning with the apostles and continuing down through history to you and me, God has chosen fallible men and women to proclaim His message—the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. He didn’t have to let us help. He could have written it in the sky, or implanted it in the hearts and minds of human beings, or done some other miraculous thing far beyond what we can do. Yet He granted us the privilege of partnering with Him in His work.
Beginning in our homes with our children, God has called us to partner with Him in introducing others to Him and helping them know Him. He wants us to have the same attitude about doing His work that Jessica and Lindsey had about doing the cupcakes—enthusiastic participation to the best of our ability.
What are you doing in your home (and elsewhere) to participate with God in making His good news known? Do you have family devotions? Do you talk about God with your children, or with others? Are you at least doing something to share the gospel with those God has put within your reach?
Help Him by decorating the cupcakes. Don’t just make Him do it all Himself. It’s not only a command, it’s also a privilege that we’ve been allowed to help Him. Let’s take Him up on it.
Matthew 28:19-20—Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.