Wednesday, January 11, 2017

                As a Christmas present, I received this neat, little 6-inch iron skillet with some of the ingredients to make a small pizza. Sounds cool. But the operative phrase in that first sentence is “some of the ingredients,” i.e. only the flour and some spices. Providing everything else like cheese, mushrooms, tomato sauce, pepperoni. etc. is my responsibility. Fair enough.

                But then I read the very small-print directions. Yikes!

                There is mixing, kneading, proofing (?), waiting, warnings about hot handles, and yeasting.  It would be much easier to go the local pizzeria and order a couple of slices.

                Now I don’t know about your household. Maybe you are all wanna-be Martha Stewarts, but I can tell you that in our kitchen there is no chance of having any yeast on hand. I can’t recall the last time we needed yeast for anything. It seems a lot of bother to run to the store just to buy a package of yeast for this project when all I need is a ¼ of a teaspoon. I can’t see myself running to a neighbour asking to borrow a pinch of yeast.

                According to Wikipedia “yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom.” Is this really something I even want in my pizza dough? (I looked up “eukaryotic” and don’t know much more that I did before – you’re on your own there.)

It goes on to say that the yeast lineage originated more than hundreds of millions of years ago.  If I did find any yeast in our cupboards, that seems about right.

There is more technical information than I ever need to know, but suffice to say what is relevant is that “yeast is used in baking as a leavening agent, where it converts the food/fermentable sugars present in dough into the gas carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to expand or rise as gas forms pockets or bubbles. When the dough is baked, the yeast dies and the air pockets ‘set’, giving the baked product a soft and spongy texture.”

                All I want is a pizza, not a chemistry project for the science fair.

                Yet, I am reminded of the story that Jesus taught: “How can I picture God's kingdom? It's like yeast that a woman works into enough dough for three loaves of bread - and waits while the dough rises,” (Luke 13, 20-21, The Message).

                In other words, to live the full, enriched, wholesome lives of being a part of God’s Great Vision for his Creation, we need to be open to the catalytic workings of spiritual rising and expansion that bubble up in us and give us the texture of being followers like Jesus (and I don’t mean soft and spongy!).

                Our lives may take some mixing, kneading, proofing, waiting as well as the spiritual yeast, but the final results are well worth the time and effort.  Sure, we live in a pizzeria-type world where things are handed to us, instantly, no fuss or bother. But what might the results be if we stirred in the yeast of God’s love, and we rose to the occasion of living our lives in compassionate kindness and tender justice.

                So, what’s stirring in your life?

Dale