The Kingdom of Heaven is Like…Yeast in Flour

Matthew 13:33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Baking homemade bread is kind of a lost art.  Even with the advent of bread machines (like the one I bought at a Christian thrift store), bread baking doesn’t mean today what it would have meant to those hearing Jesus’ parable.  Bread was a staple and baking bread was a daily occurrence.

Many kids grow up these days not even knowing what yeast dough smells like or the way the dough ball grows and puffs.  One of my fondest memories was when my grandmother would come to visit and would bake homemade bread.  There is no better sensory experience to communicate home and hearth than bread…made from scratch.

I love baking bread.  I love the feel of warm yeast dough as it rises.  I love how it’s heavy and yet, in another sense, very light.  What’s heavy is the flour and the water and depending on the recipe, sometimes eggs or butter.  What’s light is the air created by yeast, Click the yeast article to see how it works.

Here’s something you didn’t expect in a devotional:  Recipes!

Try these yummy dinner rolls:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-Dinner-Rolls/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Thumb&e11=cinnamon%20rolls&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

Or these lovely cinnamon rolls…aaaah….so light and fluffy you’ll want to kiss the cook.  Don’t let the picture throw you off.  Just make the dough, fill them, roll them, bake them and they’ll look too good to photograph.  Maybe that’s what happened here–someone kept baking them and then eating them right away before the shutter could snap them in all their beauty.  The recipe is nothing short of amazing.  My son will attest to that.  http://www.food.com/recipeprint.do?rid=50722

Yes, I love to bake.  Yeast, it turns out, can be one of God’s greatest gifts.  It’s a helpful additive to food, but here in our parable (yes, I do have a point), it’s also a wonderful illustration of the Kingdom of Heaven.  What starts out as small and really not all that interesting–it smells funny and it’s brown–yeast, when mixed in with flour and other ingredients does miraculous things.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast.  The yeast of a well-lived Christian life can permeate everything we do and turn something kind of funky into something that seems just like heaven.  Let this yeast work throughout your life and let it yield airy, beautiful, fragrant results…yeah.  Yeast, tiny powerful yeast–that’s what the Kingdom of Heaven is like!