The Ultimate Comfort Food

Angel food cake with butter cream frosting. Homemade, fresh, and slightly chilled, it is my all time favorite cake. It must be made with my mother’s recipe for butter cream frosting, though. No other will do.

Between you and me (and the World Wide Web, I suppose), I massively craved it yesterday. Yes, not just craved, but massively craved. Cravings are unusual to me, and so seeming harmless enough, I indulged myself in the process of making this cake. Well, I didn’t really make the cake. I didn’t have time for that, so I cheated and bought a pre-made angel food cake, but I did make the frosting. Like I said, there is no comparison to my mom’s recipe. To me, it is the (almost) ultimate in comfort food.

I whipped up the frosting while throwing together dinner for the family. A sample here. A sample there. Many samples every where. The texture, the flavor, the taste – did I tell you it was my favorite? I frosted the small cake, which I determined was more of a single-serving size, and therefore, had plenty of frosting to spare (which equates to sampling). Truth be told, it wasn’t really the cake I was after. It was the frosting. The angel food cake was just a vehicle to get the frosting in to my mouth -- something a bit more appropriate than a spatula.

After dinner and being that the cake was rather small, I ate a third of it. I then cleaned up, and went to bed. At 10:44 PM I woke up with a stomach ache.

“Why did I eat all that cake – I mean – frosting?” I swooned.

Thankfully, I'm better this morning. It was a quick turn around, but believe it or not, I am not craving butter cream frosting today.

Now you may be asking, what spiritual truth lies woven in this silly story? To me, it is a guttural reminder that we can eat too much of a good thing, but we can never eat too much of God’s Word -- and His Word will never make us sick.

I don’t want to diminish the fact that my cake (I mean frosting) was delicious. It was. But I am reminded that while food is good for the body and enjoyable, God’s Word is a delight, bringing comfort and strength to the soul. It really is the ultimate comfort food.

Jeremiah 15:16 says, “When your words came I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight.”

It is a satisfying truth, dear reader. God’s Word is a delicious, healthy, life-giving, nurturing, comfort food. I want to encourage you today to pull up a seat and dig in to it. Indulge yourself. God is faithful to take your heart and needs for today, and feed them with His truths and with His love. Taste and see that the Lord is good; none other than His Word will do.