On baking bread and God prods

Bread, © looseends at flickr.com

Who among us can resist a warm loaf of homemade bread or a pan of soft rolls, fresh out of the oven?



Very few, I think, and yet how many of us actually bake bread from scratch? 


Not me. Both my mom and my mother-in-law do, though, and they do it beautifully, making it look like the easiest thing in the world.

I got to thinking that the process of baking bread reminds me of how God works in our lives. He has carefully chosen the ingredients, and knows the steps that will turn us into a work of wonder.

Ahh, but here we come, deciding ourselves that we know better how to craft this recipe.

We decide that the water doesn’t have to be at a particular temperature for the yeast, and are perplexed when our bread is flat and heavy.

We work the dough endlessly, assuming that the extra kneading will result in an extra tender crumb, but are surprised when the bread is actually tough.

We decide that letting the bread rise much higher than usual must result in an even better loaf (more equals better, right?), and wonder why the finished product actually decreased in quality.



And then, I imagine as I did previously, that there comes a point when God takes his measure of us, again, and determines that it is time to take that ballooning mountain of pride dough and give it a quick light punch, to take it back down to size.



Ah, yes. It’s another God prod.

The whole situation reminds me of cooking with our girls when they were toddlers. They were so excited to be up on the shelf, cooking with me, that they just wanted to dump whatever they wanted into the mixing bowl and then turn the beaters on high and watch as the batter went flying. Fun stuff, but not very productive if we wanted treats we could actually eat.



So it is with us. Sometimes we get so caught up in being independent, being so sure we know best, that we lose sight of the recipe, of the path we were equipped to take, and are disappointed in the result, but are still brushing off and ignoring those little nudges and sometimes not so gentle jabs.

Have you become over-inflated of late, only to experience a helpful God prod?