Missing Piece

 My family got me a bread machine. Breadmaking is now fast and easy; well, faster and easier than breadmaking used to be.

Mother combined the yeast and water, then mixed it with the flour and other ingredients. Next she kneaded the bread, taking one side of the lump of dough and folding it over the other, time after time. The longer she kneaded, the better the bread would be. Then she would cover it with a clean cloth and set it aside usually on the top of the stove, where the
pilot light provided just enough heat for the dough to rise. An hour later, when the dough had risen to double its size, she punched the dough down, kneaded it a little more, pinched it off into rolls, which she placed on a greased cookie sheet to rise the second time and baked till a lovely brown.

There was no one who ever turned down her rolls and cinnamon rolls. 25 years as a cook in the school cafeteria made her one of the best bread bakers in town.

Ok, so my bread is not as good as mom’s, but it is good. I got my bread machine out to make bread recently. I opened my package of bread mix, put the water in the bottom of the machine’s bowl, the flour on top of that and the yeast on top of that. I started the machine and then went about my day,  cleaning house. I came back about 30 minutes later to check on the bread and found that the machine was running but nothing was happening. There was no bread that day. It was a flop.

When I took the dough out, cleaned it all up and investigated, I discovered that there was a little plastic paddle missing from the bottom of the dough bowl. That piece stirs and kneads the dough. Without it, there  will be no bread. My $50 bread machine is worthless without that piece. I called the bread machine company and they sent me a new paddle free of
charge.

Maybe you are like that little plastic paddle–small, inexpensive, not very important looking. You may think that you don’t
matter. If you miss church this Sunday, no one will even notice. You think, “They have so many other people that they will never miss me,” but the truth is that every person has value and importance in the plan of God.

I Corinthians 12:27 says “Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it.”

You might be the important little plastic paddle in God’s breadmaker.