Day 152: The Real Deal

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven - not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  John 6:57-58

As Jesus explains the concept of feeding on him, the imagery becomes more poignant.

Aside from the direct command to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood (which is quite shocking enough in itself), he also begins to draw the connection to the consuming of manna in the wilderness.  And, when he describes that, he says that all of their ancestors died regardless.  That's quite harsh.

The thing is, though, that the manna was given to the Israelites almost as a concession.  The Israelites were complaining to Moses about being in the desert, so God sends down manna for them to eat.  And, although they ate the manna, they continued to complain against God, and they even turned away from God.

But now, Jesus comes into the world on his own divine accord, offering us this heavenly bread of life.  Jesus comes to us in peace, offering us this life, offering us his love.  We have a choice.  Either we can take the offer or leave it.  When it's like that in plain words, it can seem ridiculous for us to turn it away, just as how the Israelites were ungrateful for food that had appeared miraculously in the middle of the desert.

Yet, we allow for many other things to get in the way and blind our view of Jesus.  Rather than seeing Jesus' love for us, we start to see our own lives, which are marred by things such as doubt, pride, anger, and hatred.  When we reexamine our lives, we start to think, in our pride, that we don't want to lower our guards.  We don't want to give up our grudges to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus means to leave our own lives behind, the lives that were defined by society and not so much by God.  We've become so attached to our society-dictated lives that we think that anything that is simply divine is not real.  We start to think that it's too good to be true.  So, we feel comfortable pushing Jesus' hands aside.

We need to listen to Jesus in our lives, and that will only happen whenever we give Jesus our time.  We need to pray in silence, where we hear neither the sounds of the outside world nor of our minds.  We need to listen to God in our prayers and in our bible reading.  We need to see Jesus before us.  When we do that, we will be able to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Of course, once we taste that perfection, we will never want to turn it away.  We will forever feast on the good, life-giving bread.

Day 049: Control

"Your glorying is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.  For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us."                          1 Corinthians 5:6-7

As some of you may know, one of my favorite cuisines is Indian, and I have tried to learn more recipes over the years.  One recipe that I spent a lot of time on was naan, because it was a great accompaniment to many dishes, alongside being a great bread to eat on its own.

Luckily, in this day and age, we have many videos on YouTube from which we can learn how to do so many things.  I found a good video on how to make naan, and I would follow the recipe exactly.  Except, after the first two or three times of doing it, I noticed that my bread wasn't doing much else than just being flatter than flat.  I had the right amount of yeast and yogurt and flower and other ingredients, but the bread would never puff up into a ball like the video.  My first solution: add more yeast.  I'd learned that yeast is what makes bread rise, so it should have made everything better.  The next time I made the bread, though, I saw that the lumps of dough became biscuits instead: alright in flavor, but way too far away from the correct fluffy texture.

Very frustrated, I decided to watch the video in full once more, but this time making sure that I paid attention to every detail.  I learned that there were two things that I did not do.  The first thing was making sure to activate the yeast in water before adding it to the dough.  The second thing was making sure that I left the dough to rise on its own for a few hours.  The next batch of naan I made was exactly what I'd had in the restaurants: fluffy, hollow, and delicious.

Whenever I come across passages from the bible about dough and leavening, they bring me back to my experience of learning how to make naan.  It took me a while to learn that a very little bit of yeast can cause bread to puff up to such a great size.  Paul warns that the same thing happens when we allow sin to grow within us.  Sure, we can create anecdotes of people who live in so much sin that they no longer seem to be living life, such as the dough that has too much leavening in it.  But, we can also start to look at our own lives, where we think that we can start ignoring our own problems.  It's just a white lie.  It's just a dollar from her pocket.  It's just a fantasy.  Then it grows.  The small bit of leavening of sinful nature can overtake us until we are filled with so much sin that we are about to burst.

How do we fix this then?  We first need try to think of ourselves as the ones who prepare the dough, for how else can we purge out the leavening of malice?  Then we need to know that there are so many tempting ingredients in our pantry, but God is also there with us, offering to demonstrate what to do. The lumps of dough are our lives, but they do not have to be the final product.  God gives us many chances to get it right, but it is only by our own efforts that we can truly receive what God wants to give us.

Less Is More

"And again he said, 'To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.'" (Luke 13:20-21)
This reminds me of the times I would spend trying to master my technique to make naan.  At first, I thought that I needed to put as much yeast as possible so that I could make a fluffy bread.  However, when I did that, the bread would just form into weird shapes and not be very fun to eat.  After a while, I learned that the best amount was just a little pinch.  Then, I would let the dough rise with the yeast before putting it to cook.  Now, I like to think along these lines with this parable, for it shows us how Gos works in our lives.  In fact, I remember Paul's saying that God will never put us through anything we cannot handle.  Thus, the yeast parable.  God puts the Spirit in us and gives us our ministries and missions. However, so long as we do not take on too much more than we could handle, after taking the time to learn how Gos speaks to us and how we are to serve our community, then we can become a very appetizing and successful bread.  We will become the best products of God.