Bread of Life

[This is my devotional that I wrote for my April Women's Ministry Newsletter. Is it cheating to use it for a post? : ) ]


I decided to make some sourdough bread today. I got my container of bread starter out of the refrigerator and was dismayed when I looked at the contents. It was a weird-smelling watery MESS! I really wondered if it was even usable. I quickly realized that I had forgotten to “feed” the starter the last time I had used it. Without new flour to feed on, the leaven—the yeast—dies, and the starter with it.


In case you aren’t a bread maker, I will give you a little lesson in kitchen science. The leaven in bread introduces air into the loaf. It permeates all the dough and changes it in form and appearance. Without leaven, the bread dough is heavy, flat, and cannot rise. Just the tiniest bit of yeast makes all the difference between light, airy bread and an inedible brick. Trust me on that one.


At the moment of our salvation, we are like the bread dough with yeast. We are "thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17) at the time we accept Christ as our Savior. But the process of transforming our lives does not stop there. We must “feed” our souls with the Word, with fellowship with like-minded believers, and with our personal relationship with the Lord.


Without leaven in our spiritual lives, we fall flat. We do not reap all the blessings that are possible because we’ve let the world get in the way of our relationship with Christ.


If we want to “rise” someday, we have to make sure we are feeding our souls with the right kind of starter, the one provided to us by the “Bread of Life.” (John 6:51)