Okay, you guys know that I got a kitchenaid mixer from the wife for Christmas (GO WIFE!!!), I’ve been a bread making fool for the last couple of weeks…yeast rolls, pound cake, garlic parmesan bread, all kinds of stuff. Today I’m making a couple of loaves of Amish White Bread, a slightly sweet, hopefully fluffy bread that is supposed to be a good base for other things.
As I was standing there working with the mixer getting everything prepped up while I let my yeast bloom I stood there absently thinking about how good it smells and how it makes me think of ‘home’ of holidays and happy times. I couldn’t help but get swept away in my own mind by what an earthy, happy, healthy smell that is. I don’t know anyone that despises the smell of baking, of the aromas and odors that come out of it. I can’t think of a single person that leaves the room when the bread making starts. In fact, my two little girls so far always come into the kitchen and sit on a little step stool we have there, playing ‘mommy and honey’ (a version of ‘house’ that they have), all the while watching me prepping the yeast, laying out all my ingredients, mixing the dough, kneading it out, laying it out to rise. It is a happy time, and one that I hope they will always remember – especially when they smell fresh baked bread. I’ve said it before, sometimes I think the old ways are the good ways, things that bring us together don’t have to be things that keep us busy and occupied…it can be the simple things like baking bread together.
I also can’t help but think too about that sweet heady smell in my relationship with God. II Corinthians 14 – 17 says: Now thanks be to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and makes manifest the aroma of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are to God a sweet smell of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the smell of death to death; and to the other the smell of life to life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.
The emphasis there is mine. I hope that I can one day become the sweet smell of Christ to God in them that are saved, the smell of life.
These things are not coincidence, they are not happenstance. Happiness comes for a reason and joy follows through trial and tribulation. It is my greatest desire that these things take root in my life and the life of my children and grow strong and mighty.
S
This ends up being the point where I do most of my rambling. Sometimes it's good, most times it's not. As far as I go, I'm a 30-something husband, father, friend, geek...everything else you want to know about me and everything else you don't is contained right here in these pages.
~Swift