Nobody knows the name of the New Orleans French chef who sold his recipe to Vernon Rudolph back in 1937. But the millions who have had the delightful pleasure of biting into a Krispy Kreme doughnut over the decades would like to say “thank you”.
I can’t point to chapter and verse, but my conviction is when we get to heaven we’ll get a hug from Jesus and a Krispy Kreme doughnut hot off the rack. Anything that scrumptious has to come from God’s kitchen.
If you have tasted a fresh Krispy Kreme, you understand my theology. If you have not tasted a fresh Krispy Kreme, your quest awaits you. Drive till you find one. Trust me, your road trip will be rewarded.
This morning Annie and Emma and I saw the orange light on at Krispy Kreme. That means fresh hot doughnuts…right now. If Pavlov had used an orange neon light and Krispy Kremes, his dog would have made that bell connection after only one Original Glazed.
When the orange light is on and you go inside, they hand you a Krispy Kreme. Can you believe? They hand you a doughnut. Fresh and free. Baptized seconds earlier with sweet sugar glaze, you feel the heat through the wax paper…thank you, Jesus! Could there be a better “welcome!” in a store? Where else do they do that? Walk into Joe’s Crab Shack and they don’t hand you a shrimp cocktail to munch on while you’re deciding what to order.
Annie and Emma and I watch the entire process through the glass. The doughnuts rolled and shaped go into the “puffer machine”. An enclosed heated oven containing a slow moving vertical conveyor. Inside the puffer machine the yeast activated dough rises. When they leave the puffer they fall into a river of hot oil where they are fried at 350 degrees till the bottom side is done and they get flipped over to finish the other side.
Then the fun part. A waterfall of white icing. The perfect finish to the perfect doughnut.
When operating at full capacity, the local Krispy Kreme store can make 270 dozen doughnuts an hour. 3,240 circles of sugar rush. Allowing for the 3 hours in the middle of the night where they shut down to clean the equipment, they can make 68,040 delicious doughnuts a day.
Observing the start to finish it occurs to me my favorite doughnuts wouldn’t be my favorite doughnuts without the entire process. A hot oven isn’t a pleasant experience, yet without the heat to raise the dough, the end result would be flat and crusty. Being dumped and flipped in boiling oil? Not fun. But necessary. You can flash the orange light from dawn till dark and no one will pull in to be handed raw dough with a sugar glaze.
As a person being pressed and squeezed and swimming in the deep fryer of life right now, I’m not enjoying the process. It’s like the conveyor is stuck. I can see the frosting fountain but it isn’t getting any closer. Or so it seems. I know I’m learning. I know I’m growing. But it’s not fun. I’m tired of it. Yet God is reminding me, through His Word and through my advisors, counselors and friends, that the process is necessary. God is committed to the quality of the end product. In fact, He is eternally determined. Nothing will sway Him to compromise the process that is preparing me for His purposes.
Wherever you’re at in your process, God is committed to His perfect end result. When will you get glazed? Only He knows. Maybe He’s preparing you to be extra special, like one of those injected Raspberry filled Krispy Kremes. (But that whole injection thing is an analogy for another time…)
Hang in there. God is at work in you.
“For we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes. For whom He did foreknow, these He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn of many brethren.”
– Romans 8:28-29
“Being confident of this, that He Who began a good work in you will be faithful to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
– Philippians 1:6
Todd A. Thompson – June 8, 2009
