I bake.
I’ve loved doing it as long as I can remember.  
About once a month, I bake communion bread for my church’s Sunday 10 a.m. service.
Communion is a concept I’m not sure I fully understand. But I love the idea of everyone going up and sharing this bite of bread—the body of Christ—together. People have been doing this for centuries. It’s an equalizer. We may not be equal in all things, but with communion, we each take our turn humbly and walk up and get our little piece of bread.
On Sunday morning at 5 a.m. I woke up in a panic.
I forgot to make the communion bread.
It’s a very bad thing to be thinking of this at 6 a.m. You can do the math, but I needed to start the biga (pre-ferment) at 4 p.m. the night before, so that at 5 a.m. that morning, I could add the rest of the flour, mix it, and let it rise for three hours. Then shape it so I could bake the loaves.
I ran through my options:

• Mix a short-rise bread, which I could bake after 90 minutes and have ready in time.
• Go to Whole Foods as soon as they open and buy two loaves of sourdough.
• Go to Whole Foods, buy the sourdough, and then act like I made it myself (a total d*ck move).

My first instinct was, I’ll make the short-rise bread. I won’t have to admit I forgot.
As I thought about getting up and doing that, a strong feeling came over me:  Go to Whole Foods.
Something, maybe the small still voice of God, said:  I want you to relax. It’s all good. Trust me.
So I went to Whole Foods’ bakery department, where the young woman behind the counter had just pulled the sourdough loaves out of the oven. They smelled and looked amazing. She told me she’d made them herself.  I told her I’d forgotten to make communion bread for this morning.
I told her that the whole church would be eating her bread.
Her face lit up.
She told me: Oh, thank you! Have a wonderful mass.
I took the bread home, cut it up, and took it to church. (I admitted I didn’t make it myself).
And that is when I started thinking that the pieces of bread we are eating so humbly represent a substitute. A substitute for what we can’t do for ourselves.
For what we can’t do, we trust God to do for us.
And Sunday, he did.