Waiting for the Bread to Rise

Yesterday's Gospel came from Matthew 13 again, and amongst a collection of parables was one comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to "yeast that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour until it was all leavened."

For a while we lived in Corpus Christi, Texas. One day while tropical storm Doris was raging outside, I decided to try my hand at making bread. This was in the days before bread machines. We dissolved the yeast in warm water, added milk and sugar (as I recall), then kneaded it into the amount of flour Betty Crocker called for. Then we set the dough aside and waited for it to rise. After what seemed like forever, I kneaded the dough again, and set it aside for its second rise. Again we waited forever. Then I decided that it had "doubled in size," formed it into a loaf pan and baked it. The result was approximately the size and consistency of a brick.

I got all kinds of suggestions about what went wrong. Perhaps the yeast was no longer "active." Maybe the water had been too hot and had killed the yeast. "Never bake during a hurricane," I was told, "the atmospheric pressure is too low for bread to rise properly." (That doesn't even make sense to me.)

The next time I tried baking bread we followed Betty's instructions exactly the same way we had before. But this time I was less anxious and gave the yeast time to do its work. The dough did rise, gloriously, and the bread was actually edible.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.

In baptism we pray that God will fill an infant, child or adult with God's "Holy and life giving Spirit." Then we kneed the dough. Sunday school, confirmation classes, service projects, even mission trips, are just kneading. The real miracle is taking place unseen from us, and if we don't rush the baking, the results can be wonderful.

What do you think?

Mike+