October 23: Boston Cream Pie Day

 

October 23:  Boston Cream Pie Day

The pie that is actually a cake was made in the Parker House Hotel in Boston by Chef M. Sanzian in 1856. Originally this American-French Chef called the cake the “Parker House Chocolate Cream Pie” and had taken the French Butter sponge cake and filled it with a delightful Crème pâtissière, an egg-thickened custard with a history going back at least as far as Ancient Rome, brushed it with rum syrup and topped with a chocolate fondant.

Please stop salivating on the page.  Although I’m not exactly sure what a pâtissière or a chocolate fondant are, I know I love to eat this cake/pie/doughnut.  So, what can we possibly take away from a crazy celebrations like this?

Several things come to mind.  The first is overwhelming gratitude at how God made us.  Think of it.  We could have been created to be sustained with a paste-like substance like cooked oatmeal or even baby food.  Why did God create us with noses and taste buds, and why did He create a world filled with so many delicious foods and potential delicacies?  Because He loves us.  More importantly, He wants us to desire things.  He wants us to pursue satisfaction.  He wants to awaken in us appetites and longings that will force us to dive into the world around us to find what we seek.  He created all those things to fall short and leave us wanting more.  It is all by design.  God’s desire for you is that you will “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4) 

Our sin-sick souls get lost in the maze of competing affections.  Apart from the eyes of faith, we eat and drink and love and spend and consume and accumulate, all in an effort to find satisfaction.  When the thrill wears off, we conclude that the problem is that we need more…and more, and more.  We take what was meant as a means to the end of finding real soul-satisfaction in God, as an end in itself.  Boston Crème Pie, sex, power, church, family, drugs…the list of potential God-substitutes is endless.  What means are you pursuing as an end in itself?  

Finally, don’t misunderstand that we should deny ourselves every earthly pleasure.  It’s a natural conclusion in light of what we’ve just said.  But an equally destructive tendency is to embrace a kind of self-centered asceticism that views all pleasure as inherently bad.  Paul has to remind his protégé Timothy of this very thing:  “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,  through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,  who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” 

So today, eat some Boston Crème Pie, or some other yummy treat.  Sanctify the many good things God made through prayer and His word.  And never forget that more crème pie will never truly satisfy.  Only God can do that.