Pondering Pasta

It is very simple to make your own fresh pasta: Combine flour and salt on a flat surface and make a well in center. Whisk eggs, milk, and oil in a bowl until well blended; gradually pour into the well in flour mixture while mixing with fork or fingertips to form a ball of dough.

Place dough on a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for about five minutes, adding more flour to prevent sticking if necessary. When completely mixed, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest.

After about fifteen minutes, unwrap dough and knead briefly on a lightly floured surface. Using lightly floured rolling pin, roll out dough to about one-eighth inch thick. Let the dough rest for about fifteen minutes or until dough is slightly dry.

Press dough gently with hand and cut into strips of desired width with sharp knife. Carefully unfold the strips.

Dry the pasta for an additional fifteen minutes for soft pasta, and for at least one hour for hard, dried pasta. If you want to use it in the future, place the pasta uncovered in a dry area for twelve to twenty-four hours, turning it a few times.

After the pasta is completely dry, place it in an airtight container or zipper-lock plastic bags so that no moisture can affect it.

When we want to use the pasta, we (once again) place it in salted hot water to make it soft again. And then when it is cooked, we drain all of the extra water away leaving us with only the portion that has any use.

Seems like a lot of steps that are either adding water or taking it away (drying) just to make and use pasta!

Pondering this, I thought this is so much like how the Lord uses us for His work. The pasta serves as an image of waiting through seasons that don't make sense.

Seasons where it seems as though we are being mixed up and flattened and then made to rest.

When we reach the point at which we are used to the resting, He flattens us once again; sometimes adding water and sometimes adding flour; depending on what we need to become the right mixture to be shaped into what He has determined us to be. And then He makes us rest.

And, again, when we get used to the resting, He once again continues to mold and shape us until He is satisfied with the outcome. And then He makes us rest.

In time, when the rest has removed all of the unnecessary elements that will cause us to deteriorate or rot, He places us into storage...And we sit and rest once again until His appointed time.

When we reach the point at which we are used to the resting and have even given up on ever being used, He takes us out of storage and prepares us for service by placing us into situations which don’t make sense.

Oftentimes we have become hard and cold and inflexible as we have lost our understanding of who we are and what we were created to do.

In these places or seasons, the temperatures will increase and all around us may become turbulent as His perfect plan is accomplished and once again we become soft and useful for His work. Salt will be added to give us flavor as it penetrates into our very being and causes us to be changed.

And just when we have become used to the temperature, He drains all of the unnecessary things that surround us; leaving us exposed as the vapors of what had been escape us…

It is then, in this final stage that we have fully become what He had created us to be and we are consumed and poured out as we give glory to His Holy Name.

Patience                            Anticipation
   Sustainable
    Trust
     Awe