Years ago at a family reunion, one of our relatives asked our uncle for his bread recipe. Because he was a baker and he made many delicious loaves of bread in his bakery each day, our uncle kept his recipe a secret. Eventually, though, he relented. But to everyone's surprise, the recipe he shared had quantities that could only be handled in a large bakery.

In Jesus' short parable about yeast working through flour, one of the most surprising details is the amount of flour he describes. Sixty pounds of flour would make over 50 loaves!

Another surprising detail, of course, is the yeast. Here Jesus is challenging his listeners in the way they think about God. Yeast is something so small that it is practically invisible, and yet it has the potential to bring significant growth, making dough to rise dramatically before it is baked into bread.

Why would Jesus talk about little yeast particles that could work surprisingly through so much dough? The kingdom of heaven, he said, is like that yeast. This helps us see that even though we may not always notice it, God is working constantly in and through people's lives throughout this whole wide world, building up his kingdom and providing us with the "bread of life" that we need in order to have life to the full.