Seeking Peace & Joy?—Leave Time for Dessert
Last night’s dinner was a lightly coated chicken breast, diced baked and then flash fried potato, and mixed veggies. Plenty to eat for everyone, but no dessert. Now, we almost always have some sort of cookies or ice cream or cake or chocolate etc. around but last night we didn’t and of course instead of being thankful for all the good food I’d just plowed. Through, I focused on what I didn’t have. Raise your hand if you’ve ever focused on what.you didn’t have directly after getting something totally worth while. Okay everyone with your hand up can put it down and the rest of you better. Never tell me “the check is in the mail.”
So now I couldn’t. Help but look up some facts about cake and ice cream (two. Things that seem to disappear pretty quickly from the dessert counter and sometimes from our. Counter and fridge. I found some interesting facts and I’m going to pass them along—well right after this little biblical interlude that floated through my mind.
So Phil was walking. Down the street and notices his shoe is untied. He is a very. Careful guy and doesn’t want to trip over the string so he kneels down. Unfortunately, in the process of doing that his smart phone pops out of his pocket and slides into the street. He reaches for it just as the route 11 bus rounds a the corner and then a flash of light. “Welcome to Heaven Phil. My. Name is Gabriel and right after lunch we’ll start your flying lessons and get you fitted for a halo and whatnot.” The two heavenly bodies magically appear at a table where there are a whole. Group of angels sitting. Gabriel says to Phil “when you hear the harp strike 12 you just think of what you want to eat and it will appear. Phil smiles as the harp starts to sound. Bing—a hot turkey sandwich on toasted wheat bread, some fresh fruit, a cup of his favorite soup. Finally, some cake pops onto the table. “Wow,” declares Phil “it’s a miracle.” Gabriel shrugs. “There are a lot. Of those around here.” Phil stops chewing for a second and looks a bit perplexed. “Far be it for me to complain—after all I’m in heaven and all and and this lunch thing is amazing, but the cake...it’s not what Iordered.” Gabriel just grinned and tilted. His halo slightly to the right. “Look Phil you’re an angel now...you may as well get used to this white cake. It’s. The only kind we get.”
Alright I won’t mention brands here, however unlike Phil you can go to the superstore and. Choose from 30 varieties of cake from DH and they are only one of three biggest dessert mix companies. That Betty lady and the Dough Boy also have a myriad of options. In fact, if you made a different cake/frosting combo every day—you would have an eternity to eat cake. As the resulting factorial would be 33 digits long even before the frosting variations were added. Oh and we’re not counting. Cheese cake, coffee cake, or twinkies.
So in fact, if the French rioters would have been “let to eat cake,” sop to speak they would have had plenty.
So what goes with cake? Ice Cream. Since people are inventing. New flavors all thetime (Ben and Jerry are just two of the culprits), it is useless to research. How many flavors of ice cream there are now or at any given time. What we do know is that the average American eats 48 pints of ice cream each year. The average life expectancy is over 70 now so we are talking over 400 gallons of the stuff.
Well this research. On dessert was making me hungry, but then I Read some amazing stats. That sort of helped me lose my appetite.
The World Health Organization believes that by the end of 2020 We will have developed a world food supply that could feed the entire world if we would invest $28 billion dollars in the production and storage of food. That seems pretty positive...but then we spend $59 billion a year worldwide on ice cream.
Well...Phil got used to the Angel Food Cake...but I’m going to have to think a bit about the ice cream thing before I can make room for dessert.
Will I eventually. Give in? Sure... but maybe for a while I’ll make sure that others a eat dessert first—
For now I’ll leave you with a thought. That almost always brings me some peace and joy. Many. People have quoted and paraphrased this and so here’s the gospel according to Phil...
“Peaceful and Joyful is the person—not. Who gets what he wants—but learns to want what is placed in. Front of them on the. Table. Of. Life.”
some weekend poetry and song coming next
I hear some trumpet music..good lord I hope it’s just Louis Armstrong....Peace
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