Bread for Today

Again he said, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was all leavened all through.’  Luke 13:20-21

 So I thought about this as I mixed that handful of yeastinto my eight measures of flour this morning.  

Yesterday I taught chapel at Cornerstone Christian Academy and we leaned heavily on metaphors.  How is life like a hurricane? Smashing, unpredictable, exciting, hard.  Fourth graders really got it.  Then I asked How is our faith like tromping around rugged mountains, hauling a smashed Land Rover by mule to where equally hauled big stacks of firewood wait, and then it is melted down in a hot hot fire, the random bits and impurities are scooped out and then carefully the Craftsman pours the shiny mass into the mold of His choosing.  

As as I looked at that mass of dough hiding under the plastic plate Andrea made for me when she was in Miss Blair’s first grade class, and I think about the hurricanes and the hot fire, I think, “That is a lot of passive voice.”  A lot of being acted upon, rather than doing the acting.  

I don’t know how that yeast stuff works.  I just know that it involves a lot of waiting.  I had some conversations with some people yesterday about how the waiting is not much fun and sometimes it feels like God has forgotten me or doesn’t care or I am doing everything wrong and a hopeless case... or worse.  Is He there?  

But it does work.  And tonight, when I come home after another long hard day, it will be there: crispy on the outside, large airy crumb on the inside.  Bread for today.  Just enough.