Coffee Cakes and Pearled Gates

He would have paid twice the price for a coffee cake half the size. The bid was $40.00. You see the baker has a reputation for investment. She had lavished butter, flower, sugar, cinnamon vanilla and mysterious love in a mixing bowl early that morning with one motivation, love. She transferred the sweet mix to a radiating oven filled with waiting waves of catalytic heat, ready to do its work of releasing the dulcet aroma and finishing the crispy creation to perfection.

Our annual church bake sale usually turned into both a laughter extravaganza, smack talking party and a bidding war for the best offerings brought to raise funds for global missions; sacred sweets! People who couldn't go to a foreign land could bake for the poor or bid on the goods; on behalf of  the forgotten and the yet to be freed by the Gospel's power. To give once more in a special way, for the faces they will see in heaven because they cared and baked and bought! Serious business…

Heavens gate are mysterious things. The first hand view of these portals of the majesty, is described by John on his visionary journey into the unseen realm of future things. Each gate is a pearl with lustrous, translucent glow so inviting to behold, and to step through forever. The gates are open and calling for the least, the last and the lost to come and rest. Imagine for a moment, with me, a small child who has never tasted more than a cup of rice a day and spent her few short years on violent streets, can enter Christ's glory because she heard a message, from a missionary, who was sent to a country, by money spent on a coffee cake. Isn't that a sweet thought? Pun intended! Sold to the man with the smile on his face for $40.00!