Scripture tells us, “God is love,” and “God so loved the world he sent his only son that we might have eternal life.” Neat concepts, but these familiar lines can lose their impact and become ho hum when they don’t touch our hearts.

We might put these words into context to let them take on new life in and through us.
Maybe we can pull out a divine recipe card, a spoon, and a mixing bowl, and cook up a deeper understanding of what God’s been up to in his Kitchen for trillions of years as the Divine Baker.

Here’s a theory to chew on.

The First Creation

What if God—who is Divine Love—decided a billion years ago he wanted to place his Spirit into matter.  He thought it would be neat to sprinkle the ingredient of Divine Love, his DNA, into plants and birds, lions and tigers, lakes and streams, stars and planets, cats and dogs. 

And then he got another idea—how about I create humans too, and place my seed of Divine Love in them? And poof, God’s dream became a reality as he spooned his Divinity into our humanity.

God then stepped back and looked at all he created. He smiled a divine smile as he saw his Spirit of Love sparkling in matter. And it was good. Beautiful.

The Second Creation

Then millenniums later, God wanted to remind humans of how much the Creator loves us because we’d forgotten. He wanted to give another tangible example of his unconditional love. So, the Creator put Jesus into the world.  Jesus’ feet walked the earth’s soil for thirty-three years. St. Paul described him as the One who did good, and God was with him.

God was happy seeing how his son loved, healed, and taught us we are love and loved.
But we got confused. We didn’t understand the Divine Recipe. Jesus was too much for us—too much love—and so we beat him up and put him to death so nobody would follow in his footsteps.

Even while suffering, however, Jesus continued to say, “I love you unconditionally. You can do anything to me, spit at me, mock me, and nail my arms and legs onto a tree, and I will still love you.”

And he did.

God then completed his Recipe by sending the Holy Spirit, and placing the Divine Spirit into our human hearts. The Holy Spirit now lives within us to guide, give wisdom, and remind us we are loved—and we are love.

The Third Creation

If God is the Divine Baker, his desire is to continually pour more love into the batter of the universe. So, God lets us become part of the Divine Recipe.  We are the rest of God’s unfolding story.

We co-create with God through the help of the Holy Spirit. Like Jesus, we’re invited to do good, and God is with us as we become part of God’s plan.

The cool thing is, we get to choose the ingredients of how we incarnate the Creator’s love in the world.

When we give a hug, smile at a stranger, birth a child, or serve bread to the hungry, we become part of God’s desire to place Divine Spirit into matter as we multiply love.

With the Divine Recipe in mind, the words, “God so loved the world” take on new meaning because we are the ingredients through which the Creator mixes more Love into the world.

And the Divine Recipe’s not complete without your life. You and I are the third creation.

As Saint Teresa says, Christ has no body now but ours, so we’ve been given the freedom and responsibility to become part of the Universal mixing bowl of Love.

The Holy Baker invites us to move with compassion and grace into the world’s kitchen—to knead and spread love into the dough of our lives and the lives of all we encounter.

The Divine Baker’s Recipe is simple: we are love(d).

—brian j plachta
www.brianplachta.net