The Master Baker

It's always slightly amusing to me to see how God uses things that I teach to others to teach me. This past weekend, we went out to the Boys Home twice, once on Saturday night and once on Sunday night. Saturday night, we got to do a special dinner and movie night with the guys that we planned. We watched October Baby. I'm just gonna say this now, if you haven't seen it, you need to. It's a Christian movie, but it's completely unlike other Christian movies out there. It's so, so good. All of the guys, who are teens who like action-packed adventure movies, were riveted, and they were totally engaged in the movie.

At any rate, October Baby is about adoption, so I was able to share with the guys about my experience being adopted. Wow. Talk about humbling. It was humbling for me to be so vulnerable, so painfully honest about what I've experienced. All the hurt that comes from feeling unwanted by my biological father. All the questions that I've wrestled through. Was I a mistake? What am I here for?

I've answered most all of those questions by now, but whenever I talk about my journey, it brings all that pain back. And yet it's been a part of my growth and maturity. It's made me who I am today. It's thrown me on God in a way that never would have happened otherwise.

I cried while I was sharing.

That was humbling.

But it was also healing.

Just realizing that God uses my suffering for good. Always. No matter what I'm going through, He WILL use it for good!!!!

We talked about that same thing the next evening at the Boys Home. Clint and I shared the story of Joseph with the guys, emphasizing that suffering we experience is for our good. We used the illustration of baking. All the ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, yeast, egg) make a mess. We don't see the end result. But the baker knows exactly what he's doing. Using those ingredients, he can make a delicious loaf of bread.

We likened these ingredients to our lives. Flour is soft. It represents the comfortable things in our lives. Sugar is sweet. It represents the enjoyable things. Salt is good, but we can't usually eat a lot of it. It represents the uncomfortable things in our lives. Yeast doesn't taste good at all. It represents the painful things in our lives that are really unpleasant, but they make us grow. And egg is the protein. Raw, it tastes gross. Cooked, it is delicious. It represents the things that make our lives stronger.

God uses a combination of these "ingredients" to make our lives what they are. He knows exactly how much of each ingredient He needs to use to "bake" our lives to perfection.

So yeah, that was really good to teach. And then Clint went in to the ER on Monday night with appendicitis.

Ummmmmm..... what?????

God tested my view of my own teaching. I found myself wondering, "God, what in the world are you doing??? We didn't need this right now!!! We're already stressed!" I'm pretty sure I threw the adult version of a temper tantrum in my heart.

But then I remembered. God is the Master Baker. I am not. He knows why we needed this experience right now. He is going to use this ingredient for good, even though it may taste nasty right now.

Come to think of it, I'd probably make my loaf of life with only flour and sugar. Not only would that bread not rise, but it would taste disgusting and would fall apart, even though my finite human mind thinks it would be delicious. I'm so glad that He is the Baker and not me!

Life hurts sometimes. A lot. But God is using it for good. Always. And I can trust Him, no matter what.