Ahhh, I do love the savory aroma of fresh-baked bread. Not enough to make it on a regular basis, but occasionally I like to roll up my sleeves and bake something completely delicious and nutritionally bankrupt. I know that the things that come out of my oven aren’t always very good for my body, but they surely do minister to my soul.
Homemade sourdough bread is like that. It may have about as much nutritional value as a Twinkie, but you know what? No matter what the food police say, virtue cannot always be defined by vitamin content.
Until just recently, it had been a long time since I made sourdough bread, although it used to be a regular part of my life. Before we had children, someone gave me some sourdough starter, so I began making bread. My husband loved it so much that he even occasionally pitched in to help me make it. Bedtime conversations like this were not unusual:
“Uh-oh, I forgot to feed the stuff,” I would say. “Did you feed it?”(The “stuff” is the sourdough starter goop that has to be fed potato flakes and other things to stay “alive.” Sometimes I thought I could hear it breathing at night.)
“No, I didn’t feed it,” Joe would sleepily answer. “Do you think it has to be fed?”
“If we want to make bread tomorrow, it does,” I’d answer.
So one of us would haul ourselves out of bed and go feed the starter stuff. It was good training for all the sleepless nights with fussy babies that would follow. But once those babies did start coming, the last thing we needed was “stuff” living in our refrigerator that demanded attention, so our days of sourdough breadmaking were over … until now.
I was recently visiting a Mennonite store with some friends and was lamenting how I love sourdough bread but never again want to be enslaved to the maintenance routine it requires. The shop owner overheard me and said she had a recipe for sourdough that uses a starter you simply whip up an hour before you want to make the bread. No nocturnal feedings, no “stuff” living in the fridge.
I gave it a shot and it worked. Wow — all the blessings of sourdough without the hassle.
I sure do wish it was that easy to get untangled from other things in this life that steal our energy and threaten to enslave us. Overpacked schedules, overextended credit, overblown material desires, overindulged children – so many things can suck the life out of us, if we let them.
If your days have become a breathless sprint from one stressful obligation to the next, it’s time to simplify. Cut back the schedule, cut up the credit cards, cut through the marginal stuff of life, and determine to keep the main things the main things.
And when you’re pondering your priorities and allegiances, remember that God wants to be the “mainest” thing of all. When we put Him first, everything else somehow falls into place.
People and “stuff” try to enslave us. If we let them, their clamoring voices can drown out the gentle call of the only One who offers real freedom to those who choose to serve Him. We never walk more freely than when we’re yoked to Jesus.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” – Galatians 5:1