Refusing To Eat Resentment Cake

So I was thinking about being a peacemaker, again.

I was particularly thinking about it in the light of the relational struggles that make the need to make peace more apparent. For example when the ingredients for a resentment meal present themselves. You may be familiar with these ingredients.

• 1 tablespoon of an innocuous incident that at first you could overlook.
• Add two teaspoons of doubt as to whether that incident was as innocuous as it first appeared
• While mixing this also put in a pinch of someone’s view that suggest that you were right in thinking there was more to it than met the eye.
• The mixture can settle for a while and then you add another tablespoon of another incident the gives you the impression that this is a pattern.
• Whisk thoroughly, making sure you don’t focus on anything else like actually approaching the person to resolve the matter, or considering that life is too short to be holding a grudge.
• Once this is set in place, you have the perfect Resentment Cake.

It doesn’t even take that much to get hackles raised and suspicion playing its part in future relations. Once that cake of resentment is there it certainly puts you off trying anything else. It does its job in spoiling your appetite.

That’s why it’s good to be reminded how to refuse to eat Resentment Cake. The heart of that is about recognising the mercies of God in your life and seeing the initial innocuous event and subsequent less innocuous events as the set up for extending mercy further. Getting that insight is a practice.

It makes me chuckle reflecting back on the occasions where someone has annoyed me and I failed to see that this was the time to practice mercy. It makes me chuckle because it’s clear that God has no intention of laying off or getting me to avoid these scenarios. He is intent on shaping my character to practice mercy by giving me more innocuous incidents and encounters with not so innocuous people to see if I will be a sucker for the Resentment Cake.

The hope and plan as ever is to be a doer of the Word and not just a hearer and put into practice what it takes to refuse to eat Resentment Cake and be the peacemaker He always designed me to be.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden