The Bread Baker's Apprentice

In 1987, a twenty-two-year-old named Marco arrived in San Francisco from a small village outside Naples, carrying little more than his grandmother's sourdough starter wrapped in a damp cloth. He spoke almost no English. He had no contacts, no savings, and no plan beyond finding a bakery that would take him in.

He found one on Clement Street — a cramped shop run by an elderly French baker named Henri. Marco showed up every morning at 3 a.m., watching Henri's hands, mimicking his movements, learning the language of flour and water before he learned the language of the streets. Henri never rushed him. When Marco shaped a loaf wrong, Henri would gently press his flour-dusted hands over Marco's and guide them through the motion again. "Feel the dough," Henri would say. "It will teach you, if you let it."

Marco later told a reporter that the hardest part was not the early hours or the language barrier. It was the surrender — placing his hands under someone else's hands and admitting he did not yet know the way.

That is the prayer of Psalm 25. "Show me Your paths, Lord, teach me Your trails," David writes — not from a place of casual curiosity, but from the raw vulnerability of someone who has lifted his entire soul upward and said, "I do not know the way. Guide my hands." The Almighty does not shout directions from a distance. He presses close, covers our fumbling hands with His own, and shapes us through patience and covenant love.