Life In the Lager

I have recently been researching the process of brewing. It is quite intriguing actually, you take your ingredients and put them in a mush tin to boil, there are other intricacies to this process but it all ends up in either a bucket (if you are a home brewer) to various sizes in between to some gigantic fermenter to wait a few weeks. The interesting thing here is that this is the place that the yeast is introduced; the job of the yeast is to eat the sugars in the unfermented beers. The problem with the yeast is that it can be fairly unpredictable in the brewing process. Science has taught us a lot about this process of the yeast eating the sugar, but there is still an element of unpredictability.

Sometimes the yeast stays “asleep” and won’t eat the sugar.

When this happens either new yeast must be introduced, which can be quite a large process for the big name brewers or a lost cause for a home brewer. If the new yeast doesn’t work, which is highly possible and not the ideal situation, the whole fermenter full of beer is lost and hundreds of thousands of dollars as well. Not a good development. The “vat” or fermentor is lost, it must be dumped. Now this can be between five gallons for a home brewer, probably about fifty dollars to a mainline brewer that would lose thousands of gallons and more than I make in about five years.

It has crossed my mind that we are in a sort of fermenter. We have our world, our surrounding, our “people” that we come in contact with. There are situations or “sugars” that we have the capabilities to take care of or “eat” but I wonder how often we stay “asleep” instead of taking care of the situations. Slowly our world, our fermenter dies and we slowly go to sleep and the world becomes more and more lost and full of situations, sins, or “sugars.”

I am not suggesting that we can change every single situation, just as the yeast doesn’t eat every trace of sugar. In fact, I believe it will continually get worse until Christ comes back. However, we must obey the call that is put upon our lives and not use others as the barometer for how “awake” or “asleep” we are. We are called to focus on Christ as our example, figuratively speaking, the most alive “yeast” because He was absolutely connect to the Father and Spirit. We must rely on this life that we have from God to keep us alive and “awake” and we don’t revert back to the sleep (that looks a lot like the death we are saved from.)

One day, I believe the “fermentor” will be “dumped” when Christ comes back, but until that day, I am striving to continue to be a “yeast” that will continue to “eat the sugars” or take care of the situations God leads me to so that His name will be glorified.

Thanks for reading this, this isn’t my normal train of thought, but as I was randomly researching this I thought this was an interesting concept. All is not lost, keep on fighting, keep on loving, keep on pointing others to the hope that we have and they can have in Christ!