Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Everyone Loves a Winner

Image by 7721622 from Pixabay

A funny thing happens in a city when one of its sports teams reaches the playoffs or finals.

Suddenly, everyone becomes a fan.

This is especially true if that team has suffered a trophy or title drought for a considerable length of time, perhaps decades.

The team’s fortunes become a topic of conversation everywhere in town. People talk about their team’s success while at work, in stores, or on transit. They speak with authority about the merits of certain players, or even about specific shots in particular games.

On any given day, people in town know exactly where their team stands, and how many games they need to win to achieve the championship title for that year.

My hometown of Toronto experienced this in 2019 when the Raptors won their first NBA title in the franchise’s history. Their victory was celebrated with a massive parade downtown, attended by millions.

I had friends who gushed about the Raptors’ success, then grinned sheepishly and admitted, “And I don’t even like basketball!”

Everyone loves a winner, don’t they?

But what happens when your team doesn’t produce the victory everyone is hoping for?

Jesus could tell us a thing or two about that.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 1 Comment

The Perfect Recipe for Bread

Photo by Momentmal on Pixabay

There’s nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread in your own home, is there?

More and more people are finding this out. One of the surprising consequences of the pandemic-associated lockdowns has been a resurgence of home baking. So many people have been baking bread at home in recent months that some stores have even run out of yeast and flour.

For beginners, it might take some time to get the knack of baking bread from scratch. Even for more experienced home bakers, baking the perfect loaf of bread will take numerous tries and repeated tweaks to the recipe.

The Bible has a few things to say about this life-giving substance. By tracing the story of bread through the Scriptures, we can see how the “recipe” improves over time, culminating in something we all desire:

The perfect bread.

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