kept by hope

A few quick button presses and I slid my Dutch oven into my oven as I preheated it to 500 degrees. Forty minutes later I remembered it again and went to bake my bread... and I discovered the oven had never made it past 260. It wouldn't keep heating, so I shut it off, called Grant, and made a plan to go bake it somewhere else during a bit of extra time in my afternoon before I went in to volunteer at school. I didn't really have enough time to allow the full pre-heat there either, but it claimed to be at 500 degrees when I dropped the loaf and parchment paper into the Dutch oven and hoped for the best. I'm sure the oven itself was at 500, but the Dutch oven wasn't and when I lifted the lid off 25 minutes later for the portion of the baking time without the lid, I could already tell it wasn't going to be the best loaf I'd ever made. I deepened the score on the bread with a prayer that it would pop open just a little bit more and shut the oven door.

Then I stood there and watched the bread. Was it rising? Maybe? I kind of felt like it was? Slowly? Almost never do I have time in my day to simply sit and watch bread rise... so it was an experience. I just kind of sat there and watched it on and off, hoping it would just keep. on. rising. just. a. little. bit.

In between monitoring the bread, I finished "God of the Garden" by Andrew Peterson ("Adorning the Dark" was better, in my personal opinion, but this was good too) and as I sat there and hopefully watched bread rise, I was struck by his words on pages 194-195:

"I am kept by hope. [...] I begin the routine of shutting down the house... I turn away to rinse my toothbrush before climbing into bed. As I drift to sleep, I pray for my children, my extended family, my friends. Some nights its hard to believe in much of anything. But on nights like this I feel the warmth of my sleeping bride, hear the occasional pop from the fire in the other room as the wind howls in the eaves, and I feel his goodness and his gaze. He's there and listening. The sound of the distant train blast as it rumbles through Antioch, following the berm beside Mill Creek, tugs my attention to the night beyond the window, and to the moon and the wind and the barking of dogs. I feel again the quiet patience of catmint, snowdrop, yarrow, and aster roots in the garden, just ten yards from my bed, blossoms waiting in the exile of winter for spring to fling open the gate to Eden again. With each successive moment, by the unfolding of time, Christ's creative Word continues its pronouncement that he is King of it all. The Word keeps speaking, and the universe whirls on. If he stopped, we wouldn't know it because there wouldn't be anything left of us to know. But his love keeps pronouncing spring, articulating childbirth, enunciating thunderheads, reciting nectar flow like a poem, conducting the orchestra of time from one movement to the next -- trees clapping their hands, myrtles bursting into flower, grapes swelling on the vine, the earth tilting enough to darken the northern hemisphere and ignite the maple leaves, snowflakes piling precariously on the backs of high twigs, sequoias shooting skyward and fattening like balloons -- all because Jesus said so. He keeps the whole thing going, holds it all together because he loves us. Love is his glory, and his glory is our joy. He keeps the story going until it's magnificent end. Until then he keeps the ache blooming in our chests with every hammer blow of beauty, keeps us hungry for the wedding feast with every eucharist, every gathering of the saints. Even in pain, death, and danger he keeps our ending safe as houses in the promise that the sorrow now is a countermelody to the impending trumpet blast of joy."

He keeps it all going, and He, as the object of our hope, continues to give us reasons to keep hoping and to keep moving forward. Maybe that's what keeps me making bread, raising children, putting things on the calendar, writing words, buying groceries and going thrifting, investing at school, learning how to do something new, starting a new project... we all have to be working toward small somethings that are keeping us hopeful toward the bigger Someone. He is doing something, and when we see the good and the beautiful in our every day, and when we keep pushing back the darkness with our daily living, this is hope lived out.

The bread kept rising, and I took it out, and took it home, and we ate it for supper, and it was fine. Grant fixed my oven and I baked my next loaf, and for the first twenty minutes of the bake, with the lid closed, I wondered if it would run into the same problems as the previous one. But it didn't. I lifted the lid and was delighted to see puffy, raised bread, almost broken open already at the score. There is always the hope that the next time will be different, or better. That's what keeps us moving forward. We are made with a longing for things to be better. We are made for Home. Our hope is given to us to keep us moving toward Home, to keep us reaching forward, pressing on... never arrogantly believing that He could be absent and the world would still exist, but choosing to see Him in everything... choosing to see where God is present and listening.