This is Bake Cookies Day.

Yum! Yum! Nothing beats Christmas cookies right out of the oven. Which ones are your favorites: Gingerbread men? Peanut blossoms? Sugar? Shortbread? Spritz? Jam Thumbprints? Pecan Tassies?

If you’ve ever made cookies, you know the steps. First you get all the ingredients together. Next, you mix them in the right order (dry first, and then wet). Then you form the cookies. Finally, you bake them. Then you’re ready for the best step—you eat them.

But have you ever bitten into a cookie that was half-baked? Not too good. They have to spend time in the oven, just the right time, to be perfect.

Not only does heat help us prepare food to eat; but heat also helps make steel, form diamonds from coal, and remove impurities. The Bible uses that last one as an illustration of how believers can grow strong in their faith.

We can experience many kinds of “heat” in life. Persecution is one kind. That’s when people make fun of us or even try to hurt us because of our faith. Another kind of heat involves the challenges of living, like the pressure you feel in school before a big test and when you have to make an important decision. Heat can also come from life’s troubles—sickness, setbacks, injuries, broken possessions and relationships.

Life’s heat can help us become all that God intended. The heat can remove impurities, like purifying gold. It can make us strong and durable, like in forging iron and steel. And it can make us appealing and tasty, like a Christmas cookie.

So instead of running from troubles or whining about them, look for what God is doing with you in his kitchen.

For everyone will be purified with fire (Mark 9:49).

To Do

Ask a parent or older sibling to make cookies with you. Then make special ones for the family and a few dozen more to give to people in the neighborhood. Use the experience to remind you of God making you just right.

Also on this day

1898—A new automobile speed record was set at 39 mph.

1936—Su-Lin, the first giant panda to come to the U.S. from China, arrived in San Francisco, California. The animal was sold to the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois for $8,750.

1965—Kenneth LeBel jumped 17 barrels on ice skates.

From Betsy Schmitt and Dave Veerman, 365 Trivia Twist Devotions: An Almanac of Fun Facts and Spiritual Truth for Every Day of the Year (Cincinnati: Standard, 2005). Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation unless otherwise noted.