Rolled Out Flat

C

hicken and dumplings is my favorite meal of all time.  My grandfather also loved them but he they weren’t on his diet.  Still, whenever he felt like having them, he’d call me to spend the weekend because he knew they’d be on the menu.  Now, not wanting to disappoint him and not wanting to refuse a free meal of chicken and dumplings, I always accepted his invitation whenever he offered it.

There is an art to preparing this southern meal, especially in making the dumplings.  Good dumplings don’t come from a frozen package, you can’t buy them off the shelf, and you can’t have them delivered by mail order.  They are made from scratch, using the best ingredients, a lot of elbow grease, and heaping measurements of love. 

It always amazed me to watch my mom make dumplings.  She mixed self-rising flour and hot water into a ball of dough.  Then she would flour a smooth surface, take her rolling pin, and begin working the dough into a thin sheet.  This was always my favorite part. The more she worked with the dough, applying pressure from the rolling pin, the thinner it became.  It grew in size from a small round ball to a large flat oval.  Mom always said that the secret to good dumplings was to make sure and roll the dough out flat.  The more pressure you applied, the thinner the dough, and the thinner the dough, the better the dumplings.  In all the tastes tests I’ve run over the years, I have found her claims to be utterly true.

The book of Exodus paints a vivid picture of how life pressures us both in our daily as well as in our spiritual lives.  For several generations, the Hebrew children enjoyed a good life in Egypt.  They married, built homes, developed communities, and prospered.  Everything seemed to be going well.  The Egyptians looked favorably on them because of Joseph’s role in saving Egypt during a time of great drought.  However, a pharaoh ascended the throne who was unfamiliar with Joseph and he determined to subject the Hebrews to slavery so they would pose no military threat to the Egyptians.

Exodus 1:12 records this and gives us a very interesting point of view concerning life’s pressures. This passage tells us, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.”  It takes a few moments to digest this statement.  If anything, it would seem that the more oppressed they were, the smaller their numbers would become.  But the exact opposite of that was true.  The more pressure the Egyptians heaped on them, the more they increased and grew. Just like the dough for the dumplings, the pressure worked to produce an increase instead of a decrease.

What was God up to?  Why did he allow this oppression to continue?  God told Abraham that his descendants would be prisoners for 400 years.  Finally, God sent Moses to deliver the people.  But God didn’t wait until Moses was ready to undertake this task; He had been working for more than 400 years so that He could bring the people out with great celebration and rejoicing.  When God has plans, they are always on a big scale so that we can never take credit for what He accomplishes.

Today, you may be feeling pressure from every direction.  Your job may be putting pressure on you, your family may be squeezing you, your checking account may be pushed to the limit, and God may appear to be on vacation.  With all these pressures, you may well expect to grow smaller, to shrivel up and vanish.  However, it is during these times, when you are rolled out flat, that God does the greatest work in your life.  As the pressure continues, He is molding you into the exact shape necessary to do His will.  When He finishes, you will be able to accomplish far more because of the pressure than you ever could with out it. 

So just remember the secret to great dumplings comes from rolling the dough out flat.  The secret of a great life lived for God is the same.  We must be patient with God’s process.  He is adding the necessary ingredients, kneading the dough, and finally rolling us out flat.  He does all this so that in the end we will be used for His glory.  Are you being rolled out flat today?