Seeing Things

"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

A Christmas Carol
~Charles Dickens

A Piece of Cake

“At the risk of trivializing the hope of Romans 8:28, I want you to think about making a chocolate cake. You begin with bitter chocolate. Then you stir in some dry, tasteless flour. Next come raw eggs and some sour milk. When you thoroughly mix these and several more ingredients and bake the batter in a hot oven, then end result is a lovely chocolate cake.
Now think about your life-the bitter, the dry, the raw, the sour, the heat.  In God's hands, these things will result in something good.  The hope of Romans 8:28 is that, in God's hands, the ingredients of our lives will always work out for our good and His eternal purposes.  Let this promise encourage you the next time you are facing the bitterness, the sourness, or the heat of life.  Know that God is in control."
~ Elizabeth George
Loving God with All Your Mind