The Great British Bake Off: Sprinkles of Joy

As Bake Off 2024 begins, Major Lynne Shaw wonders about the challenges we face.

On Tuesday evening, The Great British Bake Off returned to Channel 4, beginning a new weekly series of baking challenges. When the latest batch of contestants lifted the gingham cloth to reveal their first technical challenge, the only clue they’d had was some cryptic descriptions and advice from presenters Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond and judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood. As fans will know, the contestants are given very little guidance during the challenge – only a list of precise ingredients and brief instructions.

The animated campaign developed to go alongside this year’s Bake Off introduced the tagline ‘sweet relief’, highlighting how the show hopes to spread ‘sprinkles of joy’ to counteract the stormy world we sometimes face.

This got me thinking about the recipes and challenges of life. Some people might offer recipes like ‘10 steps to beat insomnia’ or ‘7 things you need to have the best relationship’. In reality these instructions are scant at best and, though maybe won through experience, that experience is personal, not fitting everyone’s circumstances.

In 1 Samuel 25, Abigail responded quickly to a challenge facing her: ‘She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys' (v18). These were sent to David, who accepted what she brought him and said: ‘Go home in peace. I have heard your words and granted your request’ (v35).

In that story, Abigail not only used the goods at her disposal as a peace offering, but used her intelligence to act as a peacekeeper, essentially saving David from his own anger. In 2024, we face different challenges with different resources, often without even a cryptic word of help from those who might judge the results of our choices and actions.

As we perhaps deal with chronic illness, unemployment, failed exams or the memorial of a loved one, we have few instructions, if any. Do we have the right ingredients and knowledge to make something good?

A showstopping life may not always feel achievable. But with our showstopping God alive and active in the world and in our lives, the challenges seem more doable. 

This is the God who took something desolate and empty, created wondrous life and called it good. This is the God who saw the pain of the world and sent Jesus – who bore the weight and the hate of all that is not good, in order to freely and generously give us life in all its fullness. This is the God who offers hope in hands that will never let us go.

When we put our trust in God, we may not know how the challenges will turn out, but we belong to a loving, faithful God who assures us that it will all still be good in the end; just like in the Bake Off tent, even when it doesn’t all go to plan, the results taste delicious anyway!

Reflect and respond

• What do you need to face your challenges? Who might have good advice?
• Listen to ‘Miracle Power’ by We the Kingdom, and reflect on a God who is there for us whatever challenges we are facing.
• Turn Romans 15:13 into a personal prayer of trust.