Whole in One

A week or two ago, while making a batch of bagels, I began to consider how much we as people are like bagels. When I asked my dad if he could think of any similarities, he looked at me and said, “Fat and doughy?”

Warning: This post may require some thinking outside the box.

So how are we like bagels? These were just a few things that came to mind.

We are all different.

Even using the exact same recipe and the exact same technique, every batch is different. This may have something to do with my amateur bagel-making skills, but no bagel is exactly alike. Even the ones on the same pan in the same oven at the same time come out differently.

Of course this reminded me of how we as people are all different, though we have the same Creator. We have common features. Male and female He created us (Gen. 1:27). We’re made of the same stuff, but that doesn’t mean we’re the same.

We are best on the other side of hot water.

What sets bagels apart from regular bread is dropping them into boiling water before slipping them in the oven. This allows the starches in the flour on the exterior to gelatinize and create a crust. Skipping this step would cause them to lose what actually makes them bagels. Of course we could just bake them, but we love bagels at least in part because of the hot water.

For us, “hot water” is not something we’d normally choose, but God can use it to grow and transform us. I think of Joseph, who said even after suffering immensely from injustice and betrayal, that what others intended for evil God can use for good and the “saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). Compared to the glory that will be revealed in us, our present sufferings don’t even compare (Rom. 8:18).

Suffering, whatever that looks like, may not be our choice, but God can use and redeem it.

Change happens quietly—and requires waiting.

Earlier this year, when I first started making bagels, I hadn’t anticipated the amount of waiting that was involved. It takes time for gluten to form. It takes time for bagels to rise, and they rise multiple times. My first attempt was a lesson in patience.

When the bagels are finally set, they’re covered. I usually put them in the laundry room. And then the magic happens (or rather, the yeast).

My grandmother has a sign in her garden I’ve always admired: “How lovely is the silence of growing things.” Change happens quietly—and requires waiting. I’m amazed how after just a brief time I lift up the towels and the bagels have changed. The process wasn’t noticeable, but the end result was.

In life too how we change and grow, as people and sons and daughters of God, may not always be noticeable. Slow growth isn’t glamorous, but it nonetheless has an impact.

Often, I don’t notice growth in myself until something happens that makes me see it. The old Sarah wouldn’t have acted that way. Yet praise God, the growing Sarah can make this decision or this choice because of God’s grace and working.

There is a hole in all of us.

He has set eternity in the human heart... Ecclesiastes 3:11

In the words of Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Some call it our “God-shaped vacuum.” Blaise Pascal in his Pensées called it the “infinite abyss” that can be filled only “with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

We are all seeking and searching. We all long to be satisfied. We’re looking to meet our human needs in ways that make sense to us. And we may be satisfied—for a time.

Yet ultimately nothing we find apart from God will fulfill us in the way He alone can. The hole isn’t literal but nonetheless real.

And how are we satisfied? Through Christ alone. He forgives. He heals. He redeems. He crowns, and He satisfies (Ps. 103:1-5). He works righteousness and justice (v. 6) and is merciful and gracious (v. 8). There is a hole in all of us, but we are whole in Him.