Girl Matters

We recently had a multicultural cook-off at work, where we brought in
dishes from different cultures. I committed to bringing an Indonesian
dish, so the night before the contest I was searching online for
recipes. The problem is, all the recipes involved ingredients that I'd
never heard of, and probably wouldn't find at 11PM in the international
section of Kroger. But then, I finally found the winner: Lapis Legit,
or "Thousand Layer Cake."

The thing with this cake is that I'd never made it, seen it, or tasted it before. I'd never even heard of the spices that went into it: Anise Seed? Cardamon???

You're also supposed to literally babysit it. You
bake it one layer at a time, taking the cake out of the oven every 2
minutes to add another layer.

And the biggest risk is that I wouldn't get to taste or even slice the
thing until the actual time of the contest. I was just taking Rita for
her word that this really was an amazing recipe. (Rita's the woman who
submitted the recipe online. Come to think of it, Rita doesn't sound
like a native Indonesian name. Hmmm...)

What I learned about doing something I've never done before is that it
REALLY helped to stick to the recipe - to follow each measurement,
ingredient, and step, word for word. Despite it being my first time, as
long as I had faith in Rita and the instructions that she gave, I was
confident that I wouldn't poison anyone.

Lately there are a lot of things that God is calling me, and people
around me, to do for the first time ever - things that we've never done
before, things that involve risks and give no guarantees. I realized
that if we just follow the instructions God has given us in His 'recipe
book' (a.k.a. the Bible) and have full confidence in the author (God,
not Rita), we can have peace and confidence along the unpaved way.

Oh yeah, whatever happened with the Lapis Legit? It won 1st place!