Bethlehem Bread Good Any Time
Six-year-old Karen appeared at the door of the family room.
“Daddy, hurry up! It’s time to make the Bethlehem bread! Mommy’s ready to start, and so am I!”
Tom Adams offered his hand to an excited Karen, who led him into the kitchen.
His wife, Donna, was waiting with the large mixing bowl packed with the tools of their Bethlehem bread ritual. She helped Karen on to the stool at the kitchen counter.
“Sweetheart,” Tom began, “since this is the first year you have been able to help us, we want to tell you something about what we are doing before we do it. OK?”
“OK, Daddy.”
“Three years ago, our good friends, the Martins, brought a wonderful new idea to our church family when they joined us. It’s called Bethlehem bread.
“We do this on Christmas Eve to remind us that Jesus is about to be born in Bethlehem. It also reminds us that our hearts need to be ready to receive him.”
Donna continued the story.
“Bethlehem is a very old Hebrew word, Karen. It means ‘house of bread.’ So we make Bethlehem bread not only as a symbol of Jesus’ birth but also as a very tasty way to share the very special love God gave to us through Jesus.”
Tom took hold of the large mixing bowl.
“You’ve watched us make bread before, Honey. You’ve even helped your mom with the bread.”
“Yeah, it’s lots of fun,” Karen replied.
“What do you see about this mixing bowl that’s different from other mixing bowls you’ve seen?” Tom asked.
“It has different things in it.”
“Like what, Karen?”
“Oh, there are two measuring cups, a wooden spoon, a small bowl, a tiny dish and that funny thing Mommy calls a whisk.”
“OK, then, let’s get the flour and yeast and eggs and everything else in the recipe and throw it into the bowl, too,” Tom said with exaggerated impatience. Karen started to giggle.
“Daddy, you can’t do that. There’s no room in the bowl for all of that. Besides, you don’t put the mixing things in with the stuff that makes the bread.”
“How very true,” Donna responded. “And that’s why we have this special ritual. You see, Karen, this mixing bowl has to be empty of all these things before we can put in the flour and yeast and everything else that makes wonderful bread.
“In the same way, our hearts need to be empty of some of the hurtful attitudes and actions we keep in them before we can make room for the newborn Jesus in our hearts.
“One of the ways we do that is to talk to someone we love about those things we’ve thought or done in the past year that fill our hearts with fear, anger or whatever makes us unhappy. Let Daddy and Mommy show you what we mean.”
As the three began to take the baking tools out of the bowl, Donna spoke to Tom: “Honey, do you remember last summer when. …” And for the next few minutes, they spoke of things that had happened between them, as well as between them and other people. A few tears even came to their eyes.
Tom then turned to Karen.
“Do you see what we mean, Sweetie?”
“I think so,” she said a bit hesitantly. “Do you know that Johnny Phillips in church school? I got really mad at him last Sunday because he was messing around and being silly when Mrs. Rasmussen was trying to tell us about the shepherds who went to Bethlehem. I even punched him in the arm. But he didn’t stop until our teacher threatened to make him leave the room.”
“You’ve got the idea, Karen. If you want, you can even pretend that wooden spoon you took out of the bowl was the anger you felt toward Johnny last week.
“When you told us about your anger, you made a choice to not let it stay inside of you. That leaves more room for God’s love to fill you up - maybe even to share it with Johnny next week. Smiling at him and being nice to him is one way to show him how God wants us to act toward each other.”
As Karen, Mommy and Daddy continued to talk about the attitudes and actions they struggled with in recent times, they all worked at mixing the bread ingredients. Karen even got to knead the dough.
The recipe they were making was her favorite because it had chopped onions and sage in it. That made the bread taste a lot like turkey stuffing. And she loved stuffing!
Just before the oven buzzer declared the bread was baked to perfection, Karen ran from the kitchen into the family room again.
“Is it done yet? It sure smells done,” she declared eagerly. She pulled both parents out to the kitchen because she didn’t want the bread to burn.
Donna and Tom brought both loaves out of the oven and onto the breadboard. Carefully they turned the bread pans over, and the loaves slid on to the board. Karen licked her lips as she slid the butter back and forth across the tops of the bread.
“I can hardly wait to take the first bite!”
“Well, my sweet little baker, you’re going to have to wait until our friends come over for Christmas dinner tomorrow. This bread is not for us alone. Bethlehem bread is meant to be shared with others.
“You see, when we empty our hearts of those hurtful things we’ve done or thought, we are also making room for God’s love to transform our hearts.”
“What does ‘transform’ mean, Daddy?”
“It’s a fancy word for ‘change,’ Honey. Like we changed the mixing bowl by taking things out and putting bread ingredients in, God has a magical way to change our hearts so we might not get angry or upset at the same things that bothered us yesterday. ‘Transform’ is a word that means being changed in our hearts.”
Donna took Karen’s lesson on Bethlehem bread one step further.
“By making our bread in the loving and thoughtful way we did this afternoon, this same bread becomes very special when we share it with friends tomorrow. It’s like God is right there with us, in the bread even. And when we share the bread with our friends - or even with people we may not like very much - it’s like we are sharing God’s love with those same people.”
“Isn’t that a little like Communion?” Karen asked.
“Yes, it is.”
Karen thought for a moment, then said, “Bethlehem bread is good at Christmastime, but it sounds like we can make it at other times too.”
“Oh, yes!” her parents smiled in unison.
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Graves The Spokesman-Review