Eggs in Baking: "Bound Together in Love

Eggs in Baking: "Bound Together in Love"

The 5 AM alarm felt gentler these days. Sarah wiped flour from her apron and reached for the carton of farm-fresh eggs, their shells still warm from yesterday's delivery. Three years into running Grace & Grain Bakery, this morning ritual still transported her back to that cramped kitchen in Aleppo.

Jemima had been sixty-three, with silver-streaked hair escaping her worn hijab. The bombing had stopped just long enough for families to salvage what they could before the next wave of evacuations. Sarah, then a relief coordinator, had been documenting stories when Jemima pressed a warm hand to her arm.

"Please, share one last meal with us."

In that dim kitchen, with plaster dust coating the counters and her four children huddled nearby, Jemima cracked two eggs-likely their last-into a chipped ceramic bowl. Her movements were deliberate, almost ceremonial, as she whisked them into the precious cup of flour her neighbour Ismaiel Jon, the old (Nanwaiee) baker had shared.

"Watch how they change everything," she said softly, her English careful but clear. "The flour alone... it is just powder. But the eggs-" She paused, golden mixture clinging to her worn wooden spoon. "They bind. They make family from strangers."

As flatbread sizzled on her makeshift griddle, Jemima's eldest daughter, Amira, translated her mother's Arabic: "She says the eggs remind her of God the father’s love. Even when everything breaks, something holds us together."

That meal, shared among seven people who had lost everything tasted like hope itself.

Now Sarah cracked eggs into commercial mixing bowls, but she still heard Jemima's voice. The war had eventually scattered that family across three continents, though Amira occasionally sent updates through WhatsApp. Jemima had found work in a Berlin bakery. Her youngest was studying engineering in Toronto. Good Lord, Sarah said to herself, although all distant yet bound together.

Last Tuesday, eight-year-old Marcus pressed his nose against the bakery window while his grandmother, Mrs. Reeves, spoke quietly with Sarah about custody battles and sleepless nights. The boy's parents were divorcing, and he'd been lashing out at school.

"Would Marcus like to help with today's batch?" Sarah had asked.

Together, they cracked dozens of eggs for dinner rolls destined for the community centre. Marcus's initial enthusiasm gave way to something deeper as he watched whole ingredients transform into elastic dough.

"Auntie, why do the eggs make it stick together?" he asked, kneading with surprising focus.

"They're the love that holds everything together, even when other things fall apart," Sarah explained, remembering Jemima's words. "Sometimes that's exactly what we need, something stronger than our scattered pieces."

Mrs. Reeves found them later, Marcus's small hands still covered in flour, his usual restlessness replaced by wonder. "He hasn't been this calm in weeks," she whispered.

The apostle Paul understood this binding power when he wrote to the Colossians: "And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity" (Colossians 3:14). Just as eggs transform separate ingredients into cohesive bread, God's love transforms broken people into unified communities.

Sarah often wondered if her transition from humanitarian work to baking had been a retreat or calling. Each morning's first crack of eggshell provided her with the answer. In refugee camps, she'd tried to fix systemic brokenness that overwhelmed her. Here, she witnessed daily miracles of small binding—neighbours becoming family over shared sourdough, grieving widowers finding purpose in kneading bread, children like Marcus discovering that beautiful things emerge from mixing broken pieces together.

The morning rush would begin soon. Sarah smiled, watching steam rise from fresh loaves cooling on wooden racks. Jemima had been right- ‘love doesn't prevent the breaking, but it ensures nothing broken is ever wasted’.

Wayfarer's Reflection

God's love works like eggs in baking-transforming our fractured pieces into something nourishing and whole. When life feels scattered, remember that you're not meant to hold everything together alone. Just as eggs bind flour into bread that feeds others, God's love binds our broken hearts into communities that heal the world. Your cracks aren't failures; they're places where His love enters to create something beautiful. Trust the process of becoming whole, even when it feels messy. What seems broken today may be tomorrow's miracle.