Monday, December 02, 2013

The Gospel According to Enriched Flour

It's that time of year when high-caloric recipes are flowing through my Pinterest feed and I get in that baking spirit.  Although I play a career woman on a daily basis, there is a secret side of me that would enjoy meal planning and being able to have the time to cook and bake for more than just me on a regular basis.  With work and school, many times, Cheerio is more than a greeting, but a dinner menu item.  

There are so many flour options these days - whole wheat flour, gluten-free flour, all-purpose flour, enriched flour.  During my devotion this morning, I read this verse:  "That by Him you were enriched in everything--in all speech and all knowledge." (I Corinthians 1:5)  The word "enriched" stuck out to me.  I've been enriched.  Hmm, what does that mean?  To help me understand I go to the process of enriching flour to understand the context. 

The purpose of enriching flour is to replenish the flour with the nutrients it lost from its unrefined flour state.  Clearly this process isn't flawless and there isn't a way to make it completely as nutritional as the pure, unrefined state.  But it is an attempt to restore what's been lost.  Read that line one more time.  It is an attempt to restore what's been lost.  And then the light bulb came on.

The sin in the garden ruined our pure state and we became flawed...missing our valuable "nutrients," if you will.  Jesus came to restore what's been lost.  Like enriched flour, we won't be perfect and sinless like Jesus until we are in Heaven, but as I Corinthians says, "By Him we are enriched in everything."  

My life is still sinful.  Yet, Jesus' righteousness enriches me.  Until that day when I "rise" to meet Him, may I cling to His enrichment every single day.

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