Amish Friendship Bread.

Twenty days ago my pottery teacher gave everyone in the class "starter" for Amish Friendship bread, and the recipe to make the bread in ten days. You let the "starter" (which is part of the last batch of batter) sit on the counter, unrefrigerated, in a plastic bag. You mush the bag every day (to mix), on day 6 you add more ingredients, and on day 10 you finish it off. Part of the "finishing" process is that you take 4 cups of batter out and set it aside as "starter" for 10 days out... then you take the remaining batter and make 2 loaves of this yummy sweet bread. The recipe is such that you can add just about anything to the basic recipe, and make different kinds of bread.

Twenty days ago I had one little bag and a recipe. Ten days ago, I had 4 starter bags, and two loaves of blueberry bread. Today I have 16 starter bags (I hope to give away 15) and 8 loaves of bread (2 lemon poppy seed, 2 cranberry walnut, 2 blueberry chocolate, 2 chocolate). Since I rarely (read: NEVER) bake, this is an unusual feat for me, and I'm tired.

Having said that, I'm intrigued by how rapidly Amish Friendship Bread can multiply. What if, instead of Amish Friendship Bread, we had Spiritual Friendship Bread sitting on our counters... and every 10 days (or 10 months!) we saw a four-fold increase in what we were doing for God's Kingdom which we then passed along to others. WOW! In no time at all, our world would be changed.

So... what, to you, is your "spiritual starter"? What gets you growing and multiplying what you do for and with God? The Holy Spirit? Listening to God's Word? Getting involved in a life-changing project? May we be multiplying like friendship bread!