Bread rises because you put something in the dough that makes tiny gas bubbles to stretch the dough a little before they pop. These days, we use yeast or baking powder. Our ancestors used leaven—a lump of dough saved from yesterday’s batch of bread. Before you shape the dough into loaves and put it in the oven, you pinch off a bit to leave until tomorrow, letting the natural yeasts and bacteria in it get a good head start.

Jesus says God’s kingdom is like a small lump of yesterday’s dough. Doesn’t sound much like a kingdom, does it? But like the mustard seed from yesterday, the leaven-lump is more powerful than you think. In Jesus’ parable, one lump can make about 50 pounds of flour rise. That’s a lot of biscuits!

The tiny seed or the smallish lump becomes home for all us birds or bread enough to feed us all. That’s God’s kingdom in action.

By Richard Vinson from D365