The blessing and the burden of eating

Summary

The story of the Israelites in the book of Exodus is one referred to many times, but is nonetheless an important one, that reflects the relationship between God and his people, whether on a personal level or God’s people as a collective.
In the scripture that we just read, we see the Israelites receive the gift of Manna. They ran out of the food that they brought from Egypt by the middle of the second month. Then after their murmuring God provided Manna, to test whether they would trust him. He promised to give them Manna every morning, they needed to take only for their daily fill. And yet right after that we see their doubt in God, so they took more than they needed.
God’s mercies are new every morning for us. There’s a constant reminder of that precious gift that Christ gave us on that cross, a gift we never deserved.
Yet everyday we worry about our physical bread: where it is, where it will come from, how to increase it, if it will increase, if we should share it, if we can at all share it, and how to eat it. We wake up to the imagination… oh no it’s not an imagination, the idea that what matters first is our physical bread, because without it how else can we function? We believe in this so much that we overlook, diminish, belittle the greatest most profound, indescribable, incomprehensible gift, and that is the gift of God’s grace, given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. The gift of forgiveness.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then these things shall be added unto you. Not the other way around.
It’s about that moment, that moment of awe, that moment that humbles you or brings you to tears, when you think of the depth of this gift.
The Israelites were in awe when they saw how God had honoured his promise by sending Manna to them. I’m not sure if at all we take the time to really imagine what this must have been like. We grow our food, sadly not so much in Norway this year with this heat! But to wake up everyday and find that your food just fell out of the sky, and free of charge, no Meny or Kiwi discounts, just free. Every morning! Insane!
But after a while it gets tiresome you know. You know? Manna from heaven, every day, like, no Tacos on Tuesdays, or Fridays, since we’re in Norway. Not that I like Tacos. But you see here we find the importance of fixing our eyes on Jesus, the bread of life, and not just as the provider of all our physical needs, but beyond that and more importantly, the giver of grace and love, that will stand the test of time. See when all these physical things perish what we remain with is our spiritual food that can sustain us, and if we don’t have that then we crumble. Why? We have set our eyes on temporal matters instead of focussing and investing in our faith, experiencing more of God’s grace and love, more than we expect certain miracles. And by miracles here I’m referring to those moments when we say, “Oh it can only be God”, those things that just come to us that we haven’t worked for, but God bestows upon us.
Jesus explains to his disciples that he is the bread of life, and even after he says that, and just moments before that rebukes them for expecting a constant supply of miracles, especially as Christ’s wingmen you know, they still go ahead and ask for a sign or something.
We cloud our minds with the wrong priorities, and since they’re clouded it’s not easy to see how God is working in our lives beyond providing our physical needs. A typical example is when one becomes a Christian, versus many years after. The new Christian is filled with awe about how much God loves them and the promises that God makes to them, this gift of forgiveness that is too much to fathom. The older Christian acknowledges all these facts and is grateful…. but to some extent that spark isn’t always there. Oh yes, there’s grace, I’ve experienced it, it’s great, hallelujah, love lifted me. What happens to that fire? As humans we are born with what they call hybris, self-pride, that on our own we can achieve, and the physical will always be in conflict with the spiritual, that we can reason on our own and create our own happiness. Life is what you make it, they say. Once these ideas start to creep into our life and we let our guard down, we’re in for trouble. All of a sudden, the thought that the gift of forgiveness and grace aren’t as profound as achieving certain milestones that everyone can see physically. But all is vanity, Solomon says.
Last week some friends of mine and I got into this discussion, and in the end, we talked about how to reach out to people who decided they didn’t want to be Christians anymore, or that they wanted to “explore” other religions. Long story cut short, I started think of a common trait that I’ve observed in all my conversations with people who were previously Christian. Their personal relationship with God was either non-existent, or malnourished. There was a sense of unfulfilled expectation, obligation, that it was too much work, or just plain pointless. And then I thought, hmm true, if you continue to do things in the same pattern, with minimal or no guidance from God, but do not see life-changing results, what’s the point? That’s the definition of insanity.
As humans we are action-oriented, even though not all times. But we need to see progress in everything we do. And when we don’t, we panic or at least assume that something has gone terribly wrong. If things have been good, they need only get better. The yearning for more that sometimes makes us miss the point, the point that whatever happens in our life, good or bad, we are bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. While we were sinners he died for us, that we may have life and have it in abundance. Imagine that every day we can wake up, proclaim and rejoice in the fact that we are saved, we are loved beyond any other creature created in heaven and on earth. It’s mind blowing! I will confess though, that that’s not always the case for me. Sometimes more than others I’m amazed about what Christ has done for me, what he has seen me through. But the only explanation I have found is a change in focus. A change in my perception of what matters the most. Is it me succeeding in life, or that I received a gift from God and have the opportunity to live that out in everything I do?
Back to the scripture, we see some of the Israelites taking more Manna than they needed, because they did not trust God. And this is something that happens in our lives too, when life is going really well we feel the need to make it last, so we want more. We even have sayings for these things, like: make hay while the sun shines. So appropriate as much as you can in whatever little time we have on this earth. But what is all this that we appropriate? Solomon calls it vanity. Now, please do not get me wrong, this has nothing to do with pursuing our dreams and hard work. Rather, this is about hard work with the confession that we are not the authors of our own lives. God created us, and with the gifts he has bestowed on us, he expects us to seek him on how to use those gifts wisely. Let me take you back to our thoughts when we have physical bread.
Where it is, where it will come from, how to increase it, if it will increase, if we should share it, if we can at all share it, and how to eat it.
See when we stand in awe of the grace of God, all these questions are answered. It is when we walk alone or more dangerously, follow the crowd that we find ourselves in limbo on how to handle our physical blessings. When we wake up in the morning and still can’t understand why Christ took our sin upon himself, died and resurrected for our sake, questions about how to share what we have appropriated diminish.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately following a reading of the lives of the first Christians. They lived together, they shared all that they had. Would I be able or most importantly willing to live like that? And then of course we make the argument that it was a different time, life and society wasn’t as developed as it is now…. or at least that’s the explanation that makes us sleep better at night. This is a thought that I struggle with, how much am I willing to sacrifice? How much are you willing to sacrifice? We tend to seek God more when we need that physical bread, when we have it in abundance, well… maybe we’re afraid of the response we’ll get from God. GIVE IT ALL AWAY MY CHILD. Oh my goodness. No. I worked hard for this. I toiled day and night. You saw me Lord, you saw it all, and now I should give it away?” Could it be, the more we have, the harder it is to trust God? To trust God that he can replenish and give us exceedingly more when we give, as we are freely given by Him?
I do not have to go so far back. Just two years ago I lived in a student home. And it was anything but glamourous, it was horrible! I’d be elsewhere and worry if someone else had opened my cupboard or my fridge. And then there’s this one. One day I found one of my pots in someone else’s cupboard, and left a, well, very, strong warning of what would happen if this ever happened again. All in caps and I can’t remember the number of exclamation marks on that paper. While this was a collective of total strangers, my reaction got me thinking. Did the pot mean that much to me I had to shame someone for having it in their cupboard? Could confronting them be the better option? No, I wanted everyone to see and know that someone had stolen my pot! Did I even know that they had stolen it? I mean, IKEA.
I’m always challenged by the parable of the unforgiving servant who asked his master to forgive him his debt. After being forgiven he goes straight to his friend, takes him by the neck, to collect what he owed him. Now again, I’m not saying that if someone steals your car or does anything that breaks your trust that there should be no consequences. The point here is how we approach these situations, and this is based a lot on how much value we put on our belongings. Vanity, Solomon says. Pots are vanity. We walk on this earth, every day, forgiven. Forgiven. I think we find ourselves in many dilemmas because we don’t fully comprehend what this means.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added unto us. Instead, we seek ways to better ourselves and in the midst of it cry out to God, God help me! Guide me! Help me to use this! Help me to get more! Back to the Israelites, some had more, and some had less of the Manna, but, and this is the crucial part, none of them were lacking because everyone gathered according to each one’s need.
See the danger of grace is that it can easily be misunderstood. Misunderstood as a burden. If Christ did all this for me, then I owe him all that I am and all that I have. True. So, send me Lord, I’ll do anything you ask of me! On the other hand, some think of grace as a freelance ticket. If God’s grace is sufficient for me, I can live the way I want and just like Manna, they’ll be plenty of grace tomorrow for me. Between the two misunderstandings, one is closer to the truth, except, the gift of grace is not a burden. It is a gift, freely given and freely to be shared with those around us. God’s gift of Manna was to test if his people would trust him and heed to his commands.
There is this pressure within Christian circles of what a “true” Christian should do or look like or say. The world has its own expectations of us Christians, and without that personal relationship with God we are doomed. We get swayed by expectation without seeking God to understand His purpose for our individual lives. In the end, it becomes too much, how many people can you please? Christ says asks us to come to him all who are burdened, for His yoke is light.
Now, to the crowd that followed Jesus. The crowd’s trust issues came from the fact that they misunderstood Christ. Not once, not twice, throughout Christ’s ministry. I always try to put myself in their shoes, but often fail, because I know too much, I know how the story ends for them. But when I read the questions that they asked, I think, wow! And these guys were with Jesus? See these people were convinced about Jesus, they believed his power and authority, but somehow because they had witnessed that this miracle was linked to physical food in abundance, feeding the 5000 plus, they had concluded that their obedience to God would earn them worldly advantages, and that Christ would continuously feed them by a miracle. That the meal that they had eaten had blinded them to think that would be their life, their happiness. But Jesus tells them, your happiness will not come from these temporal matters that you hold with esteem, for the meat that they ate perished, but the knowledge and grace of God, faith and love, which is the food that endures forever.
We have received the greatest miracle, and that is forgiveness! We have received the bread of life. After I had listened to a sermon about this great miracle, one day I was praying, and I caught myself, “Lord I need a miracle”. Oh! And I laughed in the midst of that prayers. My bad, God. You’ve already given me the greatest miracle, and I am indebted to you because of it. Whilst my physical needs are important for me to flourish in this life, they shouldn’t hinder me from experiencing God’s grace, to be shared with those around me.
And you know, for most of us who have been Christian for a long time, these are all things that we have been made aware of at one point or another in our Christian walk. It’s putting all this into practice that is our struggle. The struggle to die to ourselves, live in the amazing grace of God, to keep that fire burning, and then all these other things shall be added unto us. Old or new, my prayer is that we move forward with a renewed purpose to seek God and live in awe of all that He does for us, trusting that whether our physical needs are met as we would have them, the most important gift, miracle, experience is that of the grace of God, given to us by a Holy being, Jesus Christ on the cross.

Amen

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.