“My Soul Thirsts: A Baker’s Psalm”

“My Soul Thirsts: A Baker’s Psalm”

The story goes like this. I happened to have met Issac during one of my NGO field missions to Bangladesh assisting on the Rohingya Crisis. We met at a small tea shop in one of the IDP villages and after a brief introduction got talking. It became a daily routine to meet up there to exchange a few words and later work ideas and then also scripture verses- verse for the day. This daily rhythm brought us closer in faith. And from just acquaintances we became friends. But then as time went by, I moved on to a different mission, a different country but we still tried to stay connected. And just a year ago I happened to be travelling and passing through his country and city. Though I should touch base to see if we could meet, and to my amazement what I discovered is what I share here.

The scent of freshly baked bread filled the small, sunlit kitchen where Isaac Dearborn now spent most of his days. He kneaded dough with hands that had once lifted the wounded, rationed food to the hungry, and comforted children who had lost everything in war. Those rugged humanitarian camps in Diavata -Greece, Naya Para -Cox’s Bazar and the DRC seemed a world away, yet they remained engraved in his memory -and I would describe as ‘places where dust clung to clothes and desperation clung to souls.’

And the past two or three years, after the pandemic were hard, because the governments changed and so did their priorities and that slowly, but surely left funding and resources dry, and my good friend Isaac was left without mission or purpose a silence took the place of activity of relief work. There was no torture like silence. The silence was deafening. For years, he had poured himself out for others, but now he felt like a ship without a sail, drifting and lost.

One quiet morning, as he prepared another batch of bread for neighbours, leaning over his small kitchen counter, Isaac opened his worn out Bible and landed on Psalm 63:"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."

It struck him deeply. This was his heart’s cry. The same way his hands had searched for flour and water, his soul longed for something more — for Someone. It was in that moment, dusting flour off his apron, that he realized: his heart’s thirst could never be quenched by purpose alone, nor by humanitarian success or even the applause of grateful survivors. It could only be satisfied in Jesus, the One who was truly his everything.

When Isaac was shaping the bread, He thought of how Jesus had referred to Himself as the Bread of Life. He had the vision that, as bread is a source of strength and food to the body, in the same manner Jesus is the fulfilment of the innermost need of our souls. All the loafs were prayers, a kind of silent testimony in his mind that in these times of famine or dryness his life might be a witness to those around, that he could show them the One who is sufficient.

The kitchen transformed into a sanctuary. Flour-dusted counters became his altar. Each loaf a sermon. Each neighbour who broke bread with him became part of a silent testimony: that when Christ becomes our reason and our everything, even the smallest acts — like baking — can shine as beacons, leading others toward the life-saving love of God.

In the simple rhythms of baking, Isaac discovered again that he was never utterly lost. The God who met him in dusty camps now met him in a quiet kitchen, satisfying his thirst, reminding him he was seen, known, and loved — and calling him, once more, to make Jesus his everything.