• Five Minute Friday :: Prove Linkup
You need to prove your dough before you put it in the oven to bake it into bread. Yeast ferments a lump of dough – the future loaf! – so it rises and expands in size; we sometimes call that leavening. The rising proofs the dough so it comes out of the oven as lovely appealing bread that actually acts like bread—it tastes great and nourishes us well.
Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all of the dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed for us. Because of this, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of goodness and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
The Apostle Paul uses an analogy he hopes his listeners and readers will understand when he says malice and evil become a kind of leaven because they tend to spread easily, similar to the way a small amount of yeast will prove an entire loaf. Moving away from Paul's warning, it takes very little yeast to make a whole loaf rise and shine; as we celebrate the festival of resurrection; that's where we're going today as Easter people. The Holy Spirit of Life that raised Jesus from the dead also raises us to new life. We become yeasty leaven for society and for the church. We rise and we shine!
God gives us Broken Bread and Unbroken Word, as a friend in previous city's website proclaims. The loaf has been proven, baked into bread, blessed, broken, and given to us. The Word is part of the proof of God with us, God among us, God for us.
God calls us to live as salt of the earth. Light of the world. Leaven of society. You've probably experienced how a tiny packet of yeast makes its way through the loaf and proves the whole entire thing? Our lives function the same way. And just as you can add more yeast if it looks like your bread isn't rising, why not take along a companion to help increase the leavening?
Gotta say, the disclaimer under the picture, 'family of breads with legal reuse rights' made me wonder ..why and how does one reuse bread?
ReplyDeleteAnyway...
I really want to meet God, though
it seems so hard to get to Heaven
if my lump of unbaked dough
needs hate and malice as the leaven
to rise to where it's edible
(like Christ contained in broken bread?).
Sounds far-fetched and incredible
for likes of me; perhaps instead
God can set a course of study
for me, for my convenience.
I mean, I'm not just anybody,
and facing hate is SO intense
that it might just get to drive wild
my hippie peacenik inner child.
Too funny! And I even have a related story. I was going to a store on the south shore to get a van load of supplies for our upcoming summer program. As senior pastor gave me instructions he said, "When you get to Five Corners, turn at the Used Bread Store." In other words, it really does happen.
DeleteMy mind went to dough but then headed in another direction. Your post made me ask myself - will I cause good or bad as I go throughout my day? Will I be a light wherever I may be?
ReplyDeleteHaha, I too had the same thought as Andrew did about the caption under the picture.
ReplyDelete