It's Spreading!!!

I carried a brown paper grocery bag. It was warm even on the outside and the smells of fresh bakery seeped through the cracks.

Just a few blocks down, up the hill and around the bend, we arrived and rang the doorbell: "Ding-Dong."


Her kids knew what that meant and they rushed to greet us, or to greet our package better said, with: "Mommy, mommy can we have a slice right away, while it's still hot?"

That was every Tuesday morning for me: I baked 6 white loaves as payment for violin lessons.

Home-made bread, when you're the one to make it and bake it, tastes so much better. You understand all the hassle that goes into measuring and kneading - and when your teeth  set softly into that hot slice smeared with butter and drizzled  with honey you might just remember that one time you forgot the yeast.

Bread without yeast is hard as a rock. It's like it's dead; lifeless. And if you do manage to grind up the hard crusts in your mouth, still ... it even tastes bad.

I was always amazed, as a kid, how just a spoonful of yeast could make a huge bowl of dough - if you forgot about it for long enough - grow out of the container, all over the counter-top and even stretch and expand onto the stove on the right and into the sink on the left and even jump onto the floor and spread out generously. We found out by experience.

You couldn't see it move, but it did!

And that's the image Jesus used in the Gospel. You see, back then everyone made and baked their own, so they got the point.

The Kingdom of God grows slowly but surely, not by force, but by means of those souls who are truly on fire with love. Love rubs off.

So if you're not spreading, you are not genuinely Christian.