Is it bread yet?

5 Doing right makes life better for those who are good, but the wicked are destroyed by their own wicked ways. 6 Doing right sets honest people free, but people who can’t be trusted are trapped by their greed. (Proverbs 11:5-6 ERV)

I sometimes come across people who are bemoaning something in their life's circumstances, announcing they "just want things to be better". It isn't an uncommon thing to face some type of struggle only to wish things could "be better" - the struggle often reveals the unrecognized desire each of us has to see things change in our lives. What most of us fail to recognize is that the struggle is actually the catalyst whereby "better" begins - it isn't where it ends! 

It is what we "do" when we are faced with the struggles that matters. We have a whole bunch of choices when faced with struggles, but the hardest ones may be the most rewarding. They may also be the choices that take the longest to get us to a place of realizing the reward, though! Think of a little bit of yeast. We add it to a mixture of all the ingredients that will produce a loaf of bread in the end. Adding the yeast doesn't make this bread, though. As a matter of fact, although the yeast is the catalyst by which the reactions begin that cause the mixture to "rise", it still isn't bread even after is has "risen to new heights".

The bread isn't bread until it is fired in the oven! While the yeast became a catalyst to change the structure of the mixture, giving it the potential to "rise to new levels", it didn't make the mixture different than what it was - it is still a mixture of ingredients. Until it is placed into the heat of the oven, the mixture doesn't begin to really take the form it was intended to become - bread. Today's present struggles may just be the mixing of the ingredients that begin to provide access to the catalyst that moves us toward our desired and much needed change in life. We may not really see the fulfillment of that change until we have come out of the heat of the fire on the other side transformed into glowing goodness! Just sayin!