I just made my first wedding cake, a sour cream lemon cake with raspberry cream filling. I covered the cake with homemade marshmallow fondant. We have a church activity tomorrow night, and the theme is centered around
Matthew 25:1-13
The parable of the ten virgins is based on ancient Jewish wedding customs. The bridegroom and his friends escorted the bride from her home to the home of the bridegroom. Along the way friends of the bride waited to join them. When they arrived at the bridegroom’s home, they all went inside for the wedding. These weddings usually took place in the evenings, so those waiting for the bride and bridegroom carried lamps. The five foolish virgins ran out of oil in the parable but “had been taught. They had been warned all their lives.” During the day both wise and foolish seemed alike, but “at the darkest hour, when least expected, the bridegroom came.” The five whose lamps had gone out rushed out to get the needed oil, but by the time they reached the banqueting hall, the door was shut. It was too late.
President Kimball explained that “the foolish asked the others to share their oil, but spiritual preparedness cannot be shared in an instant. The wise had to go, else the bridegroom would have gone unwelcomed. They needed all their oil for themselves; they could not save the foolish.”
“In [this] parable,” he continued, “oil can be purchased at the market. In our lives the oil of preparedness is accumulated drop by drop in righteous living. Attendance at church adds oil to our lamps, drop by drop over the years. Fasting, family prayer, home teaching, control of bodily appetites, preaching the gospel, studying the scriptures—each act of dedication and obedience is a drop added to our store. Deeds of kindness, payment of offerings and tithes, chaste thoughts and actions, marriage in the covenant for eternity—these, too, contribute importantly to the oil with which we can at midnight refuel our exhausted lamps.”
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