Fresh Bread

One of my favorite childhood memories was coming home from school and walking up our long lane with my sister, opening the porch door and smelling fresh made bread as we entered the house. It smelled like home. Every where we looked was something delightful. There were crescent rolls hot from the oven and that's where we began, lathered with butter. Then gooey caramel cinnamon rolls were dumped from the pan onto wax paper. The fragrance was just heavenly. We inhaled the fragrance and were taken away from rural Iowa into a bakery filled with love. It was the best.

There is something about homemade bread that just makes me think of my mother and her kitchen. She had spent hours mixing, kneading, and shaping, then baking. My mother was an expert in the kitchen. She made homestyle meals, good enough for thrashers, she might say. But she could also master a pan full of her own style of goulash, tuna and noodles, and leftovers with a twist. It was always good.

"After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to be come bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God,'"" (Matthew 4:2-4 NIV).