I recently started my journey and exploration in sourdough. It has been quite an adventure as I have delved into the ins and outs of all things sourdough. If you have ever smelled fresh bread coming straight out of the oven, I am sure you can imagine the warm, sour aroma of that perfect loaf. It is definitely one of my favorite smells. I have been making bread for several years now, but I have never really worked with sourdough until recently.
Throughout this journey, I have come to appreciate the love and care that goes into making each loaf, and I have come to see how that applies to my life and relationship with God. To begin with, the most important thing in making sourdough is the sourdough starter. The starter is made up of three ingredients – flour, water, and yeast that is captured from the air. The starter is the leaven. This is what allows the bread to grow and rise. In my spiritual life, I view the leaven as the Trinity – God the father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As in sourdough making, without these three ingredients, the bread would not rise and grow into a perfect tasting loaf. And without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I cannot grow.
Once the starter is active, it can be used to actually make a loaf of bread. A very minimal amount of starter is added to the basic ingredients of flour, water, and salt. It is mixed together so that it is completely incorporated, and the remnants of the starter are no longer visible. As I grow as a Christian, my life should be an example of this as well. Where what I begin with, or who I was before Christ entered my life, is mixed with the ingredients that God has given me to make me into a perfect creature. The ingredients to grow me as a Christian include the Bible, praying, and the Holy Spirit. These three things should be so incorporated into me that nothing remains of what I started with. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Just as in sourdough making, my life and journey with Christ is a process. It takes more than just mixing ingredients together or “lip service.” It takes time, attentiveness, and strengthening. My life in Christ must be tended to actively and daily in order for me to grow and strengthen. How do I do that? Well to strengthen the sourdough before baking, I have to follow a very disciplined process that requires me to keep track and perform a series of what is called stretch and folds. You see when the dough is first mixed it really is just a blob of shaggy dough, but to create the wonderful airy texture of sourdough it has to be strengthened by lifting up the dough to stretch it and then folding it over on itself. This is done in several intervals throughout the process.
At first it is still kind of a mess but then it actually gets firmer, smoother, and stronger. Soon it begins to take on the shape of dough and actually begins to look like a loaf of bread instead of the original shaggy mess. So, for me, the process of reading my Bible and praying is what helps me to change and helps me to grow. That discipline, tended to daily, helps me grow in faith, grow my relationship with the Father, and become a more confident Christian so that I am no longer that shaggy mess that I started with at the beginning of the process. God puts things in our lives that He knows will strengthen us. Just as in the sourdough, He has to stretch us out of our comfort zones and fold us back into His arms. We have to continuously know that everything He puts in our path is to grow us, shape us, and to teach us to rely on Him.
Once the dough is strengthened, it can be shaped into those beautiful round loaves. This step is done in two stages – a pre-shape and a final shape. The interesting thing about this part of the process is how the dough remembers the shape it is molded into. And with the word “remembers,” I mean that it retains the shape’s properties and is very hard to make it move another way. All the things done to the dough up to this point are what help the dough to create a wonderful loaf. So, all the things I experience in my life are being used to shape me and mold me into the creature that God wants me to be. Each step and experience help in some way and provide me with a stronger foundation.
After the dough is shaped, it moves into the final rise. This is where the flavors are enhanced and the dough really begins to rise to create that light airy dough that we all love. I kind of view this stage in my life as the refinement stage. The part where God really wants us to trust in Him and turn ourselves over to His control, relying completing on Him, and helping us to be the best versions of ourselves with all the attributes that Christ displayed in His life – the fruits of the spirit. Galatians 5:22 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance…”
Finally, once the dough is baked, we have a wonderfully yummy loaf of sourdough bread. All that time and effort have resulted in, hopefully, a delicious crunchy, airy, perfect loaf of bread that is savored with every bite. It wasn’t easy, it was a lengthy process, but with perseverance the outcome can be incredible.
I chose to accept Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was fourteen. Just as in the sourdough process, there wasn’t much to me when I started, and I was kind of in that shaggy mess stage for the majority of my life. But God has continued to grow me, strengthen me, and shape me into the new creature He wants me to be. He is not done yet. I am not ready for “baking.” But I know that with all the ingredients He has given me, I can get there. You know, some of the loaves I cook are not perfect. I have even forgotten an ingredient before, but at the end of the process, I have always had something perfectly edible. In my life, I am not perfect, but with Christ I am made perfect. In John 17:23, Jesus prays to the father and says, “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world my know that thou has sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
John 6:35, “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that shall believeth on me shall never thirst.”
– Written by Alisa
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