What do gardening, raising kids and baking bread have in common?
This question came into my mind, when I realized that they all fill a daily part of my life. I love it all very much, it teaches me an awful lot and yet it is not easy! and I feel very often no clear answers.
I prepare the soil, I sow and water and then let go of it. Let is stand, watch it, pray even. It might sound crazy, but the joy when we see a little seed what found its way to the surface is so profound!
I love our kids, we protect them, teach them, have fun together, squabble, we pray, read, love and more and more teach them to take their responsibility and I have to let go! Not that I am out of touch, we still watch and follow, we see them making choices… what an real adventure to let them go… What a joy to see them slowly discover their ways in life.
May God bless them!
I knead my dough, I touch it, slam it, work it and put it in a bowl and let go of it.. let it stand, wait and let Somebody else do the rest. I come back and see what happened…sometimes it has risen, sometimes not enough. Life is messy, so is dough.
What a joy, when I finally see that the dough has risen. I can go on with the next step in baking the bread and going to enjoy it.
While I write about this I realize that it seems to me to be one of lives patterns. Jesus predicted his death in John. 12 and said: “ I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds. ”
God let go of his Son, when Jesus had to die on the cross for the sin of the world. For my sin.
God had to let go, Jesus had to let go, the Spirit had to let go. What a mystery, what a stumbling stone forever.
But let’s hold on! this is not the end.. Jesus is risen and the joy which is set before us is unmeasurable more than we now can imagine. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see, face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love, But the greatest of these is love.