So Much Yeast and So Little Flour
Imagine you are a contestant on the Great British Bake Off. You want to be this week’s Star Baker and you are planning an absolute show stopper! Your bread needs to be the best! It needs to rise the highest, have the crispiest crusts and taste the sweetest. BUT, how much flour? How much yeast? You have all the ingredients, but the yeast is such a small amount and the flour is so much.
In the Parable of the Leaven, the women uses 60 pounds of flour, which is about the same as 18 bags you can buy from a shop, it is also enough to make around 100 rolls. But the yeast in the parable is a small amount, however it creates a chemical reaction with the other ingredients and causes the dough to rise. The yeast is alive. It brings life to the dough to make it rise, without that life, the dough just sits there and does nothing. This is like what Christians believe, how God works in us, in our families and in our communities. Slowly and secretly, out of sight, but ever so powerfully. The yeast isn’t much, it isn’t beautiful and it isn’t that smart, but it is enough.
Imagine if you had 3 lots of dough, each with differing levels of ingredients, in the first amount of dough you think you have the correct ingredients, in the second you have forgotten the yeast and in the third you have added maybe a bit too much water. You set them to prove and wait for them to rise.
After some time, you go back to take a look at your 3 portions of dough. You notice that the third batch hasn’t risen at all and is still looking watery, the water has overpowered the yeast. This is similar to when Christians put other things before God, eventually these things will water down faith and drown out God.
The second batch, that didn’t have any yeast in, is looking rather flat. The bread once it is cooked will look like a pancake or pitta bread, no matter how hard you try as a baker it will not rise because there is no yeast. This for Christians is like their lives without God or Faith and hope in His kingdom –life becomes flat!
But the first batch, did have enough of each ingredient. For Christians, if they have faith and trust in God and put God throughout their lives, then like the dough they will be filled. They believe that the Kingdom of God will be as the yeast through God’s work in us – it will grow and rise.
It may take work, like the kneading of dough, and, it may take time for results to appear, just like waiting for dough to prove, BUT in the end the kingdom of God will rise.
(And what a showstopper it will be)
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