Eating Pancakes & the Rainy Day Blues

"There is hardship in everything but eating pancakes.” – C.H. Spurgeon

Let me go on record as saying that I like pancakes. Among my favorite flavors are pumpkin, blueberry, and chocolate chip, although I can’t eat the last kind anymore because of my vertigo. Sometimes I cover them with jelly and sometimes with a flavored syrup such as maple, strawberry, or apricot. Yummy!

As Charles Spurgeon says in today’s quote, eating pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks, or griddle cakes is a pleasure and not a hardship. However, as the “Prince of Preachers” points out, virtually everything else in life involves some sort of difficulty.

And yet, false teachers who peddle the heretical prosperity gospel would have you believe otherwise. In fact, they promise their immature and unsuspecting listeners nothing but blue skies and sunshine once they become Christians... and presumably, give generously to their megachurches.

In 1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called The Rainy Day which was published in Voices in the Night. The poem includes the famous line, “Into each life some rain must fall”, which was later used by Allan Robers and Doris Fisher as the title of their 1944 hit song, recorded by the Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Kenny.

Here is the rest of that stanza from Longfellow’s poem…

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Sounds to me like Longfellow understood life on planet earth – and the human condition altogether – a lot better than Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer and their ilk.

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 (NKJV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President