Reconnecting with baking bread … Reconnecting with the Bread of Life.

Interest in bread making has risen during lockdown.

At first it was because loaves had disappeared from supermarket shelves as panic buying set in. Flour then became scarce as we took to baking our own to replace that staple foodstuff.

Even with flour mills working flat out to meet demand, it is hard to find that sought after, essential ingredient weeks after loaves reappeared in plentiful supply. We have discovered or rediscovered the delights of baking.

Recipes circulate on social media to tempt us, and with more time on our hands, lockdown has been the ideal opportunity to practice this culinary skill – if you can find flour.

Bread was an essential food for previous generations. Families would have starved without it. It was cheap and it filled hungry tummies, but perhaps we thought it was something we could live without – until there was none.

In the slower pace of the ‘new normal’, as we have reconnected with baking our own bread, we have rediscovered just how essential bread is. Dipping carrot stick ‘soldiers’ into your boiled egg would just not be the same. We have also rediscovered how satisfying bread is – to make as well as to eat.

There is something deeply rewarding about combining the ingredients, and guiding the dough through the different stages until the delightful smell of freshly baked bread fills the house. Arguably, nothing compares with fresh, warm, home-baked bread. Baking our own satisfies all our senses.

There is a strong connection between Jesus and bread. Bethlehem, where he was born means ‘house of bread’. He taught us to pray that God would give us our daily bread. He used bread accompanied by fish to feed a crowd of over five thousand people. When he wanted to explain the meaning of his death and how he would die in our place, bearing the punishment we deserved, he took bread, broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you.’ To show that he was physically alive after his death, Jesus shared a breakfast of bread and fish with his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Most significantly, Jesus calls himself ‘the Bread of Life’. By doing so, he is announcing that, like bread, he is essential. It is Jesus who can deal with the issues facing us at this time as no-one else can. The health and economic consequences of the pandemic make us anxious and worried. Jesus can give us peace because he is in control of everything. The fear of death is very real. Jesus has conquered death so he can remove that fear. Lockdown leaves many isolated and lonely. Through his death, Jesus has dealt with the distancing between us and God so that we can experience his presence with us.

My wife likes to bake. The bread looks amazing and smells delightful. What do I do? Look at it? No, I eat it. So good. So satisfying.

Jesus, the Bread of Life, is satisfying, but simply looking is not enough. To experience how he satisfies, we must trust in him, and in him alone, every day. ‘I am the Bread of Life,’ Jesus said, ‘All who come to me will never go hungry.’ (John 6:35)

Baking bread at home was around long before this pandemic. We just seem to have reconnected with it now. Jesus, the Bread of life, has also been around long before this pandemic. Now is the time to reconnect with him.