The Last Loaf

For somewhere around fourteen years, I have owned a bread machine. That sentence feels oddly insufficient for something that has become such a steady companion in my life.

Over the years, I have made more loaves of bread in that machine than I could possibly count. Sandwich bread. Gift bread. “Someone is having a hard week” bread. “Congratulations” bread. “I don’t know what else to do, so I’ll make bread” bread.

I have watched dough rise through that little window in the top more times than I could ever number. And yes—I have prayed over and into that bread. Not in some formal, liturgical sense (though maybe sometimes in that way too), but in the ordinary, human way of pouring thought and love into the work of your hands. I have prayed while measuring flour. Prayed while checking ingredients against a recipe I know by heart. Prayed while wrapping a still-warm loaf before carrying it to someone’s front door.

That machine has made bread that has been shared through three different churches, across two different states, in seasons of heartbreak and seasons of joy. And last week, it made its final loaf. Or at least, what I am fairly certain is its final loaf.

Mid-bake, it started making a strange whirring sound unlike anything I had heard before. Then came the smell. Then the smoke. Enough smoke that my spouse came to get me from the other room. After fourteen years of faithful service, I suspect the motor finally gave up. And I’ll admit: I had feelings about that.

Which probably sounds ridiculous unless you’ve ever had some ordinary object become woven into the fabric of your actual life. See, for me, this wasn’t just a machine. It was a companion in ministry. A quiet participant in pastoral care. A faithful little workhorse that helped me show up for people when words felt inadequate. Somehow, the timing here feels fitting.

Around two weeks before sabbatical, my faithful machine groaned, sputtered, smoked, and announced that it was done. I happen to think there’s something almost offensively on-the-nose about that.

One of my favorite poets who also happens to be a farmer, Wendell Berry, has shaped how I think about stewardship over the years. In his writing, Berry often speaks about stewardship not as possessing something else, but as caring for it. For him–and me–things are meant to be used well. Repaired when possible. Honored when finished, but not worshiped.

My bread machine has not been discarded in frustration. It has been retired with gratitude. Fourteen years. Countless loaves. More prayers than I could name. It has helped me feed people I love and have shepherded in Illinois and Iowa. It has helped me make something nourishing when life felt like anything but. In a word, my bread machine did its work faithfully.

Lest you think the bread making is over–it’s not. I will buy another bread machine sometime soon. There will be more dough. More yeast. More waiting. More watching through that little window as something ordinary transforms. But this particular companion has earned its rest.

Maybe that’s true of more than appliances. Maybe sabbatical is, in part, learning the difference between being finished and simply being invited to lay something down for a while. Maybe we’re all invited to use this time not to produce, but to rest. Not to keep giving from a near-empty bucket, but to receive. To let the motor cool. To stop measuring and mixing for a season, and simply be present to what is already rising.

Maybe that is the point of sabbatical, of the program year here at St. Paul coming to an end this Sunday on Pentecost, and of summertime in general. Perhaps this is a season not to pause in the work. Perhaps it is the work—the slow, unglamorous, necessary work of becoming someone who can receive as well as give. Of trusting that not everything depends on us. Of making peace with rest that does not need to be earned. Of learning, again, to wait beside the window while something ordinary transforms…even if that ordinary something is us.

So as we move from one season to the next, my prayer for all of us is that we would learn to receive what we so readily offer others: grace, rest, nourishment, and time. That we would trust what can happen in the waiting, and resist the urge to force what needs time.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

---