Bakin’ Biscuits

Shortly after I starting reading The Garden of Miracles – Say Thank You and See Miracles by Rabbi Shalom Arush, I was diagnosed with a condition called Cerebellar Ataxia. Essentially, the part of the brain that controls motor skills had shut down and needed to be “re-fired” as the doctor put it. I stopped being able to work and at one point, I even lost the ability to write.

I immediately began to thank the Creator for the condition.  I was hoping and praying that Hashem would send me a miracle to deliver me from this condition. Six months later I am still seeing a doctor who is a therapist in Neurology and is a Chiropractor as well. Looking back, I am thankful that my prayer for an immediate salvation was not answered. Throughout the whole ordeal, I learned that sometimes, the miracle is in the journey. Without the journey, I would not have learned and grown the way I did if this did not happen to me.

It was like the Creator was giving me the time to do a lot of thinking. One of the things that occurred to me was that the Creator could have taken Israel straight from Egypt to the Holy Land but instead He lead them through a forty-year journey, a journey that would yield many lessons that would not have otherwise not been learned.  

I once heard a story that illustrates this point exactly:

“One Sunday morning a mother invited her teenage daughter to bake with her. The mother asked her daughter to get the buttermilk. “But mom, I hate buttermilk!”

 

The mother insisted. Next, she requested that her daughter fetch thew shortening. “But mom, I hate shortening.” By now the daughter was totally perplexed. The mother continued, “Bring me plain white flour.”

 

By now the daughter knew better than to complain that she doesn’t like plain flour. The mother expertly combined everything and shaped the dough into little balls, and put them into the hot oven. “Oh, mom, I just love biscuits!!!”

 

The mother smiled and said to her daughter: “G-d should help you realize that when life gets hard, when things come up that you do not like, whenever you do not understand what G-d is doing, that you need to wait and see what G-d is making. After He gets through mixing and baking, it’ll probably be something even better than biscuits.”

Sometimes we have to wait for the Creator to mix and bake things in our lives before He can give us the biscuits. And sometimes, we even need the “hot oven” to bake all the parts of our lives perfectly to bring the plan and purpose that He has for us to fruition.

Waiting on the Great Chef can be a hard thing to do, but part of the lesson of cooking is waiting for the results. In the ‘drive through’ and fast food society we live in, we can be robbed of the benefits of waiting.  While baking, the aroma coming from the oven can tempt you into looking or even prematurely removing what is being cooked.

The sickness I have experienced has taken time to heal. At times this can be very frustrating, we have things to do, and time doesn’t seem to be on our side. One day we are a youngster outside playing ball, the next day we wake up and we find our children having wedding anniversaries. All of this not only plays with our agendas but with our heads. We are very prone and also environmentally trained to rush into matters.

One of the things that turned me on to the Seven Commandments of the Creator instead of Orthodox Jewish conversion was Psalm 62:2:

“To God alone my soul waits silently…” (Artscroll Tehillim)

Through it all, I am still learning to wait on the Creator. One thing I have learned over the years is that even though I am not Jewish, the Creator has my best interest in mind. And this pushes me to be the best I can be.

In a way, we of the nations are like a blank canvas. Our rules are simple and few; as long as we are obedient to the few rules we have, we can be mixed and baked into many things.

A chef has many recipes containing a variety of ingredients. The Great Chef our Creator has all of creation and more at His disposal! We might not like a particular ingredient that He is using on us, but when He is done mixing and baking we will be much more than what we thought we could be.