Cheesecake

Hope is knowing that our lives count for more than our mistakes. That we’ve accumulated more substance than fluff. That the balance of our lives is weighed more toward the good than the bad, the things that are eternally good more than our mistakes. Though I’ve learned all of this in more significant ways, I made a simple mistake once that has become a parable of eternal hope.

Some years ago, I decided to bless my family by baking a cheesecake. I had yet to learn the simple truth that, when it comes to cheesecake, in cost, time and effort, it’s pretty hard to beat store-bought.

The recipe I was using called for a number of rather expensive items and a time-consuming process that all ended up in an electric mixing bowl. Before long, a beautiful mix of cream cheese, eggs, flower and other ingredients bearing mega-fat was swirling around just inches below my knuckles. The next step called for fresh lemon zest. I’d never zested a lemon or anything else for that matter. Not knowing any better, I went to work running the lemon over the grater just inches above the yellowish whirlpool, carefully slicing the tiny slivers of lemon rind into the mix. Not carefully enough, though. In a split second of inattention, the lemon slipped and my knuckle ran with the lemon over the grate. Before I could say “cheesecake,” I had added one more ingredient not called for in the recipe, a huge drop of my own blood.

There was no stopping it. That one drop of blood swirled into the mix and created something like a strawberry swirl. By the time I reached the power button the damage was done. There was blood in my cheesecake and there was no way to get it out. Even if I had wanted to, there was no time and not enough ingredients to start over. I pondered my options. I could throw it all away and make an excuse over dinner. Or, I could get creative. I looked around. No one was watching. I looked into the mixer and realized that there was more cake than blood. So, I turned the mixer back on, blended the blood in until it disappeared, slammed that puppy in the oven, baked it up and served it to my family later, none of them the wiser.

That’s the way life seems to work. Despite our best intentions and efforts, up to and including the passion to give our best to those we love, our humanity keeps getting in the way. Drops of our own blood get spilled into our parenting, our marriages, our finances and so on, places that we prefer remain pure. Everywhere we look, there’s blood in our cheesecake.

Hope comes from knowing that what God is up to in our lives is of greater substance, means more, than the sum total of all our mistakes. “This . . . is how we . . . set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20).

Hope is knowing that, even when we disappoint those we love the most or make the most humiliating mistakes, our humiliation and our humanity both get blended into the greater purpose of God for our lives. That’s why we call it hope.