chocolate Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

Chocolate Flies at Work - Cacao Tree Flowers and Pod
Thank God for chocolate flies. No, we are not talking about chocolate-covered houseflies. That sounds repulsive to us too. We are talking about the tiny flies that are essential to the production of the chocolate we love.

Chocolate comes from the seeds of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) which is native to the rainforests of South America. When early tribes in the Amazon and Orinoco River area discovered uses for the cacao tree, they started what became a chocolate craze that is still going on today. From there, interest in the trees and the tasty substance they produce spread to more of northern South America, into Central America, and into Mexico. The Aztecs even used cacao beans as money.

However, growing the cacao beans is not easy. The tiny white flowers that produce the beans require a small insect pollinator. The flowers grow out of the trunk of the tree where pollination by a bird or mammal would not be practical. Even bees or butterflies are too large. That’s where the chocolate flies come in. The pollinators that can do the job are tiny flies, or midges, in the family Ceratopogonidae. They are small enough to get into the flowers, and they are on the right work schedule. The cacao flowers open just before dawn—a time when the midges are most active. It seems like a planned arrangement. They are not really chocolate flies, but they are essential helpers for chocolate farmers.

As farmers began to grow cacao on plantations, the pollination process was not working well. Human pollination of the flowers by hand is a difficult job and not as effective as the work of the little flies. The midges were not doing the job because they prefer the shade of the rainforest over the open spaces of cacao plantations. Coincidentally cacao trees grow well in shady areas.

Farmers found a solution by planting small areas of cacao in the ecosystem of rainforest areas. Of course, that limits the areas where it can be grown and thus the amount of chocolate produced. However, the people of the world will not give up their desire for chocolate, and a fly the size of a pin-head makes it possible. This is just one more example of the importance of rainforests and the excellent design God has given this amazing planet.
–Roland Earnst © 2019

Making a Cake of Life
When I was a child, my mother used to “farm me out” to a family that lived in Brown County, Indiana. Their home was near Salt Creek where I could fish and hike to my heart’s content. Alice and Earl Page were my hosts, and they both loved to play jokes on me. One of them involved making a cake.

One rainy day I sat in the kitchen and watched Alice make a cake, although she didn’t tell me what she was making. She took a block of chocolate and asked me if I wanted a bite. Naturally, I did, but it was bitter chocolate, and I quickly spat it out. She opened a bottle of vanilla she was using and had me smell it. It was Hoosier vanilla, not the Mexican kind we have today. When I tasted the “Hoosier vanilla,” I could hardly believe something that smelled that good could taste that bad. The next ingredient was a spoon full of lard, which Alice even got me to taste. Then she handed me a paper towel to get it out of my mouth.

Alice put all of these things along with lemon juice, baking powder, etc., into a bowl and asked me to stir it up. “We’re having this for supper,” she announced. I started thinking about a way to eat somewhere else. You know that when supper rolled around, there was this wonderful fragrance floating through the kitchen. I found that it was a real treat to eat all those horrible ingredients when baked together.

Do you realize that your life is like making a cake? Your cake of life is made up of a lot of ingredients that in and of themselves are very distasteful. Look at the Apostle Paul for a minute. In Acts 22:3-21 Paul reveals his ingredients for making a cake. He was born a Jew in Tarsus and educated at the feet of Gamaliel. He became a primary persecutor of Christians (Galatians 1:11-24) making havoc of the Church (Acts 8:3). Paul had a religious experience that was traumatic in Acts 9, and he spent three years in exile in Arabia (Galatians 1:17). His ministry began in Acts 13 with years of violence, abuse, imprisonment, conflict, and trouble. It finally ended in 2 Timothy 4:6 at the end of his life.

What ingredients are making a cake in your life? They haven’t all had a good taste, have they? All of us have had rejection, failure, disappointments, sickness, the death of loved ones, and frustrations with human beings. Included in making a cake of your life has been sin, neglect, faithlessness, and failure; but Christ enables us to go through a fantastic change to newness. Romans 6 talks about baptism allowing us to die to sin and live a new life. Paul writes, “…being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have the ability to bear fruit to holiness and at the end, everlasting life. The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God (the cake that life has baked) is eternal life through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:22, 33).

As we start a New Year, let us begin a new life that radiates a change that blesses others. Look at your past as ingredients that have allowed you to leave a good taste in the eyes of God and man.
–John N. Clayton © 2019