Our fellowship’s reading program has brought us to the Gospel of Matthew once more and during this time, one of the words of our Lord struck me rather deeply. In Matthew 13:33, Jesus tells his disciples this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (NIV).

Reading this, I thought about how much time it took my wife to bake bread. Stirring the bread dough and waiting for it to rise takes time and patience. But what is amazing is that all of that change and the fragrant flavor is created by a tiny amount of yeast!

As I was pondering this, two thoughts came to me: The first is the influence that a small minority of Believers have on a nation. Just as it is inevitable that a small amount of yeast affects the whole batch of dough, so a small amount of believers will affect an entire society ... somehow.

Secondly, the leavening of the dough takes time. This idea is a little obscured by the English language in our translations. The “until” is much stronger in German and Turkish, giving the idea of “in the end the yeast will definitely work through the whole dough.” So, if we get discouraged at how slowly the yeast mixes with the dough and how slowly things change in our country, remember that God’s Word and His Kingdom have an effect that will eventually permeate the whole dough and bring about lasting changes that will be felt everywhere.