Taming the Yeast

Recently, I have forayed into the world of wild yeast. It's fascinating stuff. You take a mixture of flour and water, and you leave it for a few days, and it starts to bubble and grow. When it's bubbling and growing a lot, you save a little of the bubbly stuff for next time, and you use the rest. You add a bunch more water and flour, and some salt, you mix and knead, and you wait and wait and wait. Finally, you throw it in the oven, and out comes this:

I know, eh? It's a thing of beauty. And it wasn't quite as easy as all that. Because taming wild yeast is a tricky thing.

The yeast that leavened this bread is wild yeast that lives in the flour and in the air. In the right circumstances, it propagates and forms a happy colony in the flour and water mixture. It eats the sugars in the flour and produces, as one of the by-products, the carbon dioxide that causes the dough to rise. It's the only leaven that most people before World War II used, because it wasn't until then that the dried yeast that comes in little brown jars became widely used. But once those little brown jars became available, the ability to capture and tame wild yeasts became a lost art. Baker's yeast produces consistent results in relatively quick order. But wild yeast is, well, wild - a little unpredictable, somewhat demanding, fairly finicky, and definitely working on its own schedule.

I didn't even know you could make bread without the yeast from the jar.

And that's when I realised that when I thought about yeast in biblical terms, I was thinking about the round, brown grains that come from the jar. You know, "A little leaven leavens the whole lump," and that sort of thing. I was imagining the brown jar yeast. But biblical leaven didn't come from a jar. It was the wild stuff. And that got me thinking along whole new lines.

You see, I could never really understand why the Israelites didn't have enough time to make leavened bread. After all, they had enough time to roast a whole lamb in its entirety. In that time, I could make two batches of bread using yeast from a jar. But that loaf of wild yeast-raised bread you see in those pictures? That bread took two days from start to finish. Two whole days. Of course they didn't have time to make leavened bread, if it takes two days.

And then there's the whole idea that at every Passover, the Jews had to throw away every bit of leaven. I spent nearly two weeks trying to get my flour and water mixture to bubble enough to raise a loaf of bread. I am diligently saving some starter so I can make bread again. Some sourdough starters are years and years old. They are passed down from generation to generation, and from neighbour to neighbour. One that I read about has been around since the days of the Oregon Trail. But the Jewish people, every year, had to throw out all their starters, everywhere in the land, and start from scratch.

Because the leaven represented sin. And I can kind of get it.

The yeast that lies so obediently in the little brown jar is such a different thing than the wild yeasts I grew in my flour and water. The wild yeast is a living, growing beast. It demands to be fed on schedule, or it turns nasty. And every time you feed it, it doubles in size. One article I read said that if you started with a quarter cup of water and a quarter cup of flour, in 10 days, you'd have enough to fill a full-size swimming pool. It's insatiable. So for a while, my life revolved around my sourdough starter. I named it Gomer, after the wanton but loved harlot in Hosea. Gomer needed to be fed twice a day. I did my best to keep her home, to keep her from springing from her bounds and taking over the counter. I cossetted and coddled her. I fed her of the finest wheat, ensured that her living conditions were optimal, and still she demanded more. At this point, I can somewhat control Gomer, or at least slow her down, by putting her in the fridge and putting her to sleep for a couple of days, but the Israelites didn't have that option. In a warm climate, their wild yeast would have grown with abandon.

And wild yeast is hard to control. I can trick myself into thinking I've mastered the wild yeasts and created this lovely loaf of bread, but the truth is, when you're working with sourdough, it masters you. You feed it. You wait for it. You can't go by the clock. You go by the dough. It could take four hours. It could take eight. It might take longer yet. The dough decides, not you.

And isn't that so like sin. It starts off so small and innocuous. It promises good things. It grows more and more demanding. Its appetite is insatiable. It breaks its bounds and takes up more and more space in our lives, and if we don't meet its demands, it gets nasty and leaves us with a foul mess. And while I think I have control over it, it, in fact, masters me.

So, every year, the Jewish nation chucked it all out and cleaned house. They killed the beast. They cast out the sin. They swept everything clean. They stood under the blood of the lamb, and they were free. A fresh start. A clean slate. Free from the insatiable beast. It was a powerful image.

So, then, I wonder if, when Jesus described himself as the Bread of Life, he was saying more than that he is essential for life. I wonder if there might be some aspect in his statement to suggest that he alone has mastery over the leaven of sin, and that unless we partake of the Bread of Life, we can never hope to find victory. I wonder if he was giving people permission to let go of the tyranny of the wild yeast of sin. And I wonder about the symbolism of the Lord's Supper. Perhaps, when we take the bread, symbolic of his broken body, we sweep away the wild yeasts of sin, stand under the blood of the Passover Lamb of God, and are free. A fresh start. A clean slate. Freed from the insatiable yeast of sin.
 
 Bread of life, indeed.

Finding Happy

Have you ever assumed God wants you to be happy? Or miserable? I found myself doing that just this week.

I'm at a place right now where I'm generally content with my life. Oh, all is not perfect - it never is - but by and large, things are good. I have a job that I love. School is about to start again in a few weeks, and I'm filled with the nervous anticipation familiar to all teachers in September. I have friends who love me. I have a good home. I love my church family. I love my horse and my dog, and my car is running smoothly. Money is tight, but God is providing.

In the midst of all that, a ribbon of fear wound its way through my mind. It's all going to come crashing down, you know. Don't get too comfortable. God's going to snatch it all away. Don't enjoy it too much, or God will be sure to take it from you. And there's just enough of an element of truth in that thought that I begin to entertain it. It could come crashing down. There are no guarantees in life. Jobs get lost. Loved ones die. Pets pass on. Cars break down, and rust destroys and thieves break in and steal. It is good to be reminded occasionally about the vanity of life. Soap bubbles, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes says of life. Beautiful, shimmery, dancing, floating soap bubbles that are here one second and pop the next.

But that's not really what I was doing. In those fearful moments, I wasn't reflecting on the fleeting nature of life and regrounding myself in the unchanging heart of God. Rather, I was casting aspersion on the heart of God. I was allowing myself to think that God is a churlish beast who enjoys kicking his children just to see them squirm. I was thinking that God is a harsh Father, who, if his children are not crying, gives them something to cry about, and if they dare to laugh, he'll slap the laugh off their lips right quick.

I'm not the only one who thinks stuff like this. I hear strains of the same tune often. "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans/hopes/dreams." "If you have two choices before you, the one God wants you to do is probably the one you don't want to do." "Tell God you don't want to do such-and-such or go here-or-there, and you can be guaranteed that's what he's going to make you do or tell you where to go." We even joke somethings, when we go to a warm place in the winter, that "someone has to suffer for the Lord in the sunshine". We seem to have this idea that following Christ should involve the maximum amount of suffering and misery, and that any spark of joy or delight or, dare I say it, happiness, means we're not doing things quite right, and we must be "out of the will of God".

Now, I am the first to admit that our happiness is not God's primary agenda for our lives. I am the first to state that there are loads of times when God asks us to do hard things and walk through hard trials, things that are uncomfortable or downright painful, things that cause more tears than laughter, because those things are important to make us more like his Son. But does that mean that everything must be painful and difficult, and that if we find joy and delight in something, it's probably not what God wants for us? God's primary agenda for our lives is not our happiness, and sometimes obedience means putting my personal desires aside. I get that. I don't get to divorce my spouse, or have an affair, or engage in sexual activity outside of marriage, or be jealous of that other person, or gossip, or cheat on my tax return, or cuss at the driver who cuts me off in traffic just because those things might make me feel good or make me happy. But does that mean that being obedient involves always doing the thing that makes me most miserable and unhappy? If Plan A and Plan B are both God-honouring, obedient choices, and I would really enjoy Plan A but would not enjoy Plan B, am I really to assume that God must want me to do Plan B, based solely on the fact that it's the thing I don't enjoy? Is God really that much of a kill-joy and a miser?

I don't think so. I think I'm crazy to let the thought cross my mind. I think that God delights in my delight. I think he created me with my wishes, my hopes, my dreams, and my desires. No, outright disobedience is not ok. I get that. But obedience is not always painful. There is, as Michael Card once said, "joy in the journey", and I just don't believe that joy is some over-spiritualized pretension that all is well even I'm crying my eyes out. Joy is not grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it. It's being able to see glimpses of good even when I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it. Joy is not seeking out the darkest, stormiest skies I can find, and camping out under them on purpose because I think that's what God must want, and then pretending I'm happy about it. Yes, sometimes we get stormy skies. Then joy is being able to find a single star in that dark sky, and being able to revel in the beauty of that star, because it is beautiful. When the night is so cloudy I can't find that star, joy is found in knowing I believe the stars are there, even when I can't see them. But it's also being able to appreciate the fact that sometimes God delights to give me a cloudless night sky, set ablaze with so many stars I feel myself falling into the vastness of the universe and straight into the arms of God. It's being able to appreciate and thank him for a job I love, a home I love, family and friends I love, a dog I love, a horse I love, for as long as he gives them to me to love,without fearing he will snatch them away without any reason other than that I love them. Joy is being able to appreciate that sometimes God puts me in a place that delights me as much as it delights him, and to take full delight in that delightful situation.

Does God want me to be happy? I think in our fear of the disobedience that so often follows an affirmative answer to that question, we have decided that not only does God not care about us being happy, he would actually prefer that we are permanently unhappy. Oh, but we have joy. To which I say, hogwash. I have met joyful people. They are happy. They are able to find joy even in hardship. They are able to hold happiness and sadness in balance, neither letting the happiness cause them to fear or deny the sadness, nor letting the sadness strip away their happiness. They know you can laugh and cry at the same time. They know that sometimes God asks us to do hard things, but sometimes the things God calls us to do are just plain fun. Some seasons are tearful; joyful people do not deliberately seek those seasons out or wallow in them, but they live in them with grace. Some seasons are full of laughter; joyful people do not make it their goal to pursue or stay in those seasons, but they enjoy such seasons to the full.

God is no miser. Scripture tells me he delights in giving me good gifts. Scripture tells me that if I ask for bread, he won't give me a stone. If I ask for a fish, he won't hand me a snake. My Father is lavish, extravagant, giving freely, loving wildly.

I plan on enjoying that.

And if the opportunity comes up to go somewhere sunny in the dead of winter, I promise to laugh with the Lord and soak up the sunshine.

Sixth-Generation Butterflies

It's late summer, and the miracle of the monarchs is set to begin again. The sixth generation is being born.

Every year, far to the south in Mexico, the monarchs begin to stir themselves from their winter sleep, and start to fly north. Each generation of butterfly flies a little further north, breeds, and dies. Their average lifespan is about eight weeks. Slowly, each progressive generation moves north, until they arrive in Ontario in early summer, just as the milkweed plant is beginning to emerge.

Four or five generations live and die. But then the sixth generation hatches.

And these butterflies are different. They don't live and breed and die in eight weeks. Instead, they fly south. Traveling at speeds of about 20 kilometres per hour (on a good day), they will travel distances of up to 80 kilometres a day, for days and days and days, until they have flown nearly 5000 kilometres all the way back to Mexico.

Hundreds upon thousands of butterflies will brave storms and cold, high winds, high wire lines, open stretches of unfriendly water, predators, and starvation as they flutter their way south.

Look closely. The clover is full of butterflies feeding before they tackle the crossing of Lake Erie.

They have no idea where they're going. They just go. And these fifth- or sixth-generation butterflies don't die after eight weeks. They fly all the way to Mexico, live four or five months through the winter, and then, in the spring, start the journey north once again.

The monarchs have always amazed me. Especially the sixth-generation monarchs stir my heart. To do something so amazing. To stand out so remarkably in my generation. To be part of the generation that "takes the land", so to say . . . oh, but that would be wonderful! Every fall, I think about the butterflies, and I wish I could be a sixth-generation butterfly. To do something beyond the standard hatch-eat-breed-die-in-eight-weeks. It sounds so visionary, so victorious, as I stand on the shore and look out over a stretch of wild, open water, with the winds whipping ferociously across the waves, and I realise that if I commit to setting out, away from the safety of the sweet clover on the shore, there will be no turning back, and I am afraid to go. It sounds so grand and glorious, but I'm not sure I have what it takes.

But I realised something this year that I've never really thought about before. Sixth-generation butterflies don't know they're doing anything special. They're simply doing what they're created to do. They are following the call of their Creator to fly south. Day by day, mile by mile, wingbeat by wingbeat, they are simply obedient. Not visionary, not victorious, not grand or glorious, but obedient. And their wonder is seen only because they are obedient to the end. In the ups and downs, in the bright sunshine and sweet clover, in the wide, windblown expanses of the open waters, they are obedient. They have have no idea that they are so amazing. They have no idea that a slip of flying tissue paper has no business flying across the Gulf of Mexico, or across a Great Lake. They have no idea that fragile wings are not up to the task of flying up to 5000 kilometres. They just do it, because God has called them to the task.

But they do do it. They fly. They beat those tissue-paper wings against winds that would blow them off course. They gather in clusters to fight off the cold. They dodge the predators. It's not an easy journey to which God has called them. They have to fight every wingbeat of the way.

But because they struggle inch by inch, because they are such unlikely travelers, because they are obedient, they become a miracle. We are amazed. We watch them, hold our breath, hardly able to imagine that they can survive. They do something hard to imagine, and we admire them.

And maybe that's the answer. Maybe it's not in the visions of grandeur, but in the day-to-day obedience that the miracles happen. Maybe it's in the everyday struggle to remain faithful to the task of that day that God's glory is shown. Maybe the land is taken because unlikely travelers remain faithful to the end to the call of their Creator, despite the opposition thrown against them.

And if that's the case, then maybe I can be a sixth-generation butterfly.