When a Basement Bakery Feeds a City

In 2015, Rashida Williams started baking sweet potato pies in her basement kitchen in Detroit. She had one goal: earn enough to keep the lights on after her husband lost his job at the auto plant. She asked God for $200 a month. That was the full scope of her imagination — just enough to survive.

A neighbor posted a photo of one of Rashida's pies on social media. Then a local food blogger stopped by. Within six months, she had a waiting list of 300 customers. Within two years, she opened a storefront on Michigan Avenue, hired twelve employees from her neighborhood, and launched a job training program for formerly incarcerated women learning commercial baking. Last year, her foundation served over 40,000 meals to families across Wayne County.

Rashida still tears up telling the story. "I asked God for two hundred dollars," she says. "He gave me a whole community."

That is the heartbeat of Ephesians 3:20. Paul doesn't say God gives us slightly more than we expect. He stacks the language — "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." The Greek word there, hyperekperissou, is a term Paul essentially invented because ordinary language couldn't contain what he meant. It means abundantly beyond the beyond.

God's power at work within us is not constrained by the smallness of our requests. He meets our basement prayers with cathedral answers.