The Multigrain bread

Being a new comer in Australia, brings me lot of new experiences that happens every day. At breakfast time, my fellow priests always have toasted bread with jam or eggs, sometimes cereals which these are new for me. I do sometime eat bread and eggs back home, but Australian bread is so much different from we have in Indonesia. In our country, we only have white, thin sliced plain bread and it is a very soft. Whereas here, because of the grains, the bread is harder, and tougher too.

One morning, we ran out of jams, so then I ate the sliced bread on its own. In the beginning it gave me a funny and bitter taste, but amazingly when I slowly chewed it for some time, I gradually felt the sweetness taste that actually comes from the soft carbohydrate which mixed with my saliva. I can’t imagine if I chewed it quickly or swallowed it straight away, it’s still give a bitter taste, and it’s even worst because my throat will become really sore and I might choked easily.
Chewing is similar with doing a reflection. In chewing activity, firstly you need to bite it slowly, over and over again until the tough food gets softer. Same thing when you are doing a self reflection by reading bible, or listening God’s word, you need to ‘bite’ over and over again, and slowly too, until your tough life, or your bitter life, becomes softer, and gradually it gives you a sweet taste.
Any hard times that you are facing in your life, i.e. sickness, family loss, lost the job, house burnt down, etc, it will ended up with a sweet taste if you keep on chewing or do reflection, and it has to be slowly, until its soft, and you are ready to swallow it. The result will be completely different if you quickly swallowed by quickly complaint to God in every single hard times you’ve experienced, because your throat will be really in pain, or your life will become more miserable.
There are lots of life experiences that you couldn’t understand why it happens and quite often it is not easy to accept it. I am sure with doing lots of reflections, reading bible or listening God’s words, it gradually gives you some comfort and sweet taste after all.