Say Cheese!

Today, I have finally enough milk to make cheese. Oh boy, does it take a lot of milk to even make a little bit of cheese! The average conversion of milk to cheese is 8 lbs. of milk to 1 lb. of cheese....so you're making approximately 7 lbs. of whey in the process.

When I was a teenager, I had a youth leader named Dean Carlo. God used him immensely, and one thing he told me that deeply impacted me that 'everything is spiritual'. I've been pondering this today as I study my cheese making book...

The first step to almost every type of cheese is heating up your milk. It needs to be a little more than room temperature. Next, is ripening. Typically, I put some cultured buttermilk in with my warmed milk and let it sit to ripen. Then, it's time to separate the curd from the whey. To do this, you add rennet. There's two types of rennet: animal and vegetable. They both are basically the same enzyme that causes the milk to clabber, but they are simply derived from different sources. After letting it sit to separate, you cut your 'mass' of curd into cubes and stir to really separate. Then, you drain the whey and use your curds (the curds is the cheese, the whey is the liquid leftovers). Some people make use of their whey for drinking, but I simply can't get used to it, so I feed it to my chickens. They like it well enough, since I'm convinced they can't taste anything anyway. What you do with your curds, then, is what makes the differences in the myriad of cheeses in existence. A soft cheese is just salted and left to drain a bit more in a cheese cloth and can be used in sometimes less than a day. A hard cheese must be pressed and dressed and repressed and redressed and left to be salted, aged, turned, salted, aged, turned...sometimes for months or years!!!

(I'm making a hard cheese today, so I'll talk about it)

When I came into fellowship with my creator, it was comfortable. I wandered into his arms like a toddler reuniting with his/her mommy after spending all day with strangers. I felt cuddled and coddled and treasured. Comfort. Warmth. I felt much the way this milk must have felt (bear with me, I know milk doesn't have feelings) to be warmed gently on the stove.

If I had been left to just sit warm on the stove, I would spoil. Specific 'cultures' must be put into me to give me a specific flavor; otherwise, I would simply go sour. My patient, gracious God let that sit a while and didn't rush me while I quietly changed my flavor. He didn't 'stir the pot' while I acclimated to this situation.

Next, it's time to truly change who I am. If we are to be truly one with God, there will be a necessary separation. I like to think of God's holiness being much like rennet. His holiness is an indisputable catalyst propelling my innards toward a rapid and violent change in my very structure. As God's math and holiness often demonstrates, much of what we've been made of is more waste than wholesomeness.

Time to make less of me! He takes this mass He's created and chops me up until I barely resemble what I once was. The smaller I am, in and of myself, the easier it will be for Him to strain out my 'waste'. After all of this disruption, He is often kind enough to let me set a while and let a natural 'separation' and 'falling away' occur as I become more situated with my new identity.

I don't sit for long! He pours me out and begins to work with the substance He's made. I'm salted (oh, this has a lot of spiritual connotations, doesn't it?). The main idea behind salt in cheese making is preservation to carry the freshness of cheese on through the aging process. So, my God pledges his goodness to me so that I will not become wearied in the processes ahead of me. They may not be as violent and obvious as the previous processes, but that doesn't mean they will be easy!

Now, I am put into the press. This is not as quick as I would hope, but it's very necessary. I am squeezed and pressed to shape me into a manageable lump of cheese. This process also achieves the last of the separation of the curd and whey that wasn't removed by the draining process. Now I sit and wait to be released. Guess what? Once is often not enough! I am put into a fresh garment (cheesecloth) and put back into the press for a tighter squeeze. Usually, once more will do the trick with another fresh cloth since I've saturated all of my previous ones. In my spiritual life, I'm sure I've saturated my garments with tears during this time.

I now resemble the end product a lot. However, I do not have the appropriate texture or flavor. I must be put on a shelf and aged. However, while I wait on the Lord, I am not left alone. I am continuously taken off to be re salted and turned to the other side so I am evenly ripened. Over and over my Lord refreshes me while I wait on Him. He makes sure the conditions are just right so that I don't grow mold or dry out. In this instance, I like to think of mold as bad attitudes and impatience. Drying out to me is simply weariness and exhaustion.

After the perfect amount of time, my Lord takes me from the shelf and uses me. Milk is the raw stage, and cheese is the end product. Milk can be used for drinking, but that's it. If it's to be used for anything more, something must be done with it. Without Christ, I could be nice, hold down a job, have honest relationships, and help out my fellow man. With Christ, the possibilities open up so much more. Have you ever had a dish with cheese? I'm sure you have! How many of your favorite dishes have cheese? Probably most, because cheese is so much more flavorful and fun to work with. I long to be a pleasure in the hands of the one who made me.

I hope this reflection is not too far of a stretch to you and I hope I've communicated well. It surely means something to me, and I hope you can relate.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." -Ephesians 2:10