Sourdough Is Life

Mix flour and water. Stir. Wait. Discard. Repeat.

I’m new at this doughy venture but today I woke up to this bubbling, growing culture in my glass bowl and I knew I was on the way. I’d captured a wild yeast so they said. I felt like Mother Earth and hadn’t baked a thing yet.

Yeast. Beast. Capture/harness/tame. It sounds so farmy. I’m a little obsessed with this right now in case you hadn’t noticed.

Everything we need is floating around us, waiting to be invited into community, to begin and make something out of nothing, to expand and grow more out of little.

God has given us everything for life and godliness by His divine power (2 Peter 1:3). Everything! From a bit of reading this seems to refer to His word, but His word reveals from Genesis all the way through, His creation, how we are to steward it and the outcomes of when we love Him and each other according to His wonderful, good plan.

He promised us Life and that more abundantly.

The whole process of sourdough metaphors life. Follow the plan of creation and the maker (baker), and you’ll end up with a bubbling concoction of goodness, ready to draw from, to eat from, to be replenished by, to have as an ongoing source of nourishment.

Add too much flour or the wrong kind, or too much or too little water and you’ll end up with an uncooperative glob or a watery, starving bowl of hooch.

Done incorrectly, it won’t produce life.

Hence the allegory.

It’s not just written in a book, it’s in the air around us. Everything pulses with the truth. A Horton like chorus “We are here, we are here…”.

He is here!

I don’t mean that God is yeast. I’m not a panthiest. I just mean He has left His fingerprints all over everything and one of those things is the very air we breathe. I think I wonder if His hands have flour on them.

Work with me here. God storifies everything into meaningful messages we can understand.

It’s like a blueprint. Do this and you get that. Follow these directions and you’ll have life and blessings. Don’t, and you’ll get death and curses (Deuteronomy 30:19-20 https://biblehub.com/nkjv/deuteronomy/30.htm ).

So to be truthful I’ve baked sourdough discard tea biscuits. They were yummy but flat so I will try again. My starter is bubbling but not there yet according to what I’ve read so I’m going to keep feeding and nurturing it and hopefully will one day post here a picture of a pretty loaf of bread.

For now I’m going to enjoy the story of redemption and all the goodness God has given and especially the gift of His Son, the Bread of Life.