“Layers of Grace: A Croissant and a Widow’s Hope”
As Believers, our spiritual journey is often mirrored in the patient, delicate process of making a croissant—layer upon layer, pressed and folded through trials, only to rise beautifully in the heat of testing.
DAILY REFLECTIONS
Wandering Armenian
5/22/20251 min read


In a war-torn village of Aleppo, Syria, amid the rubble and ruin, lived a widow named Mariam with her two young sons. Her husband—a baker—had died in a bombing, leaving behind an old wooden rolling pin and a battered oven. Each morning, she would knead dough in secret, not just to bake bread but to preserve hope. One day, she attempted to make croissants—something her husband always wanted to master. She folded the dough slowly, layer after layer, tears blending with flour, hands trembling with hunger and fatigue.
With no butter but precious drops of oil, she continued. As the oven crackled, the smell of rising bread filled her small home, and neighbours whispered that heaven had touched their street. That morning, her croissants fed twelve children orphaned by the war. One of them whispered, “This tastes like love.”
Mariam remembered the words from the Old Testament:
“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” — Isaiah 40:29
So, much like croissant dough, our lives are stretched, chilled by suffering, folded again and again with grief and grace. But it is in the oven of affliction that our faith rises. Mariam, through her silent act of love, became the aroma of God’s presence in a desolate place—layered with loss, yet rich in resurrection. I too sometimes see my life mirroring this very same thing.