Thirty-five Thousand Loaves

Thirty-Five Thousand Loaves

I haven’t started reading the obituaries. I swear. But one day at lunch I opened the paper, and the sections I usually read first (front page, sports, editorials) didn’t last through the second half of my sandwich. So I opened the city section, which includes the local obits. The longest one caught my eye, so I read it through—and I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t, I would have never known about Dr. Joe, and he deserves a nod.

This scholar, university professor, scientist, and researcher apparently had quite a notable academic career. But he was proudest of a nonprofit he began nearly fifty years ago that provided shelter for those visiting the city for extended medical treatment. For these more than seven thousand families—from forty-nine states and sixty-plus foreign countries—this scientist baked bread. That’s right. Bread.

“He used his chemistry skills,” I read, “to bake sourdough bread, which he gave to welcome guests, to encourage volunteers, and to thank donors.” How much bread? Thirty-five thousand loaves, give or take. That’s a lot of baking for an amateur.

Dr. Joe’s story made me wonder, Couldn’t someone else have done that? A local bakery, maybe? And they certainly could have. But they hadn’t. He had. I imagined all the lives he must have touched with those loaves of bread. Bread for strangers. Bread for friends. Loaf after loaf after loaf. An inauspicious legacy of freshly baked love.

He had other things, important things, to offer. But I’ll bet every person who received one of Dr. Joe’s loaves remembers it.

What are you giving away? What ordinary thing are you willing to do over and over again for love? What simple thing can you offer? Will you? Baking is ordinary. Writing is too. Over the years, I’ve written more than seven hundred devotionals like this one and, week by week, sent them off to more strangers than friends. That sounded like a lot to me until I read Dr. Joe’s obituary. Seven hundred? Meh. Times ten, girl—then we’ll talk.

There’s an exquisite beauty in a habit of small offerings made with great love. Anyone can . . . but not everyone does. Joe did. Will you? Will I?

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

Matthew 6:10-11, NASB