Resting Into Providing God

I love this time of year.  All the signs of spring are upon us: birds are chattering, flowers are in bud, the sun shines and the rains come.

And with the rain, every day things get a bit greener, reminding me of the many references in Scripture to God as our Living Water.

From God’s provision of water to the people Israel, suffering in the desert in Exodus through Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John, we are continually reminded that for all our effort, God is our Provider.

I don’t know about you, but that single fact is a great source of comfort and rest for me.  It reminds me that I don’t have to be in charge; that I don’t have to worry; that I can and should do my part and (thankfully, oh, so very thankfully) leave the rest up to God.

Jesus came that we might all find rest and comfort, peace and reconciliation, in and with our God.  Let us be thankful, but even more, let us be rest-filled.

The First Temptation: Not By Bread Alone

SCRIPTURE:  Matthew 4.1-4 [Jesus' first temptation in the wilderness]

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Jesus is taken to the wilderness – this wilderness time is not of Jesus’ own choosing.  As Melissa Harmon says, “This is Jesus’ spiritual boot camp.”

He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 

This hunger is very different than ordinary hunger – not because of how long it lasted, but because of why it was.  Jesus was famished because he had fasted – that is, he had deliberately abstained from food as a spiritual discipline.

Fasting is an act of strengthening rather than weakening.  It is a way of drawing closer to God by putting away all distractions, including the distraction of the belly. Thus it would seem clear that Jesus knew he was to face trials or tests and he prepared to meet them.  It is ironic, then, that his first temptation has to do with the very fact of his preparation.

The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 

The Tempter is first referred to as ‘the devil’, in Greek,  diabolou - literally ‘The Slanderer’ (the lie teller) or ‘the adversary’ (opponent, enemy).  This is the adversary of God come to thwart the divine plan for Jesus.

But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Deuteronomy 8 is a sermon by Moses to the people about to enter the promised land.  Verse 3 from which Jesus quotes says, “[God] humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna . . . in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

God reminds the people before they enter into their prosperity that in their poverty, God was their provider.

This is the passage Jesus quotes to The Tempter to reject his offer to make a stone sandwich – the passage that reminds the people Israel not to sacrifice their souls in favor of their bellies . . . that tells them in advance that God well knows who they are and how they will behave . . . that when they get all they want or need, they’ll be tempted to claim all the credit for themselves and deny God in the process.

Perhaps this, then, is at the heart of Jesus’ first temptation: the desire to rush ahead to try to do for ourselves, to take credit for what we have and in the taking, deny the God who provided all along.

Thus might we understand Jesus’ answer:  You, Tempter, would have me turn my back on all God has done for me just to show off what a big deal I am – stone sandwich maker, indeed!  You really think a little snack is worth more to me than God?  I may not see the path ahead clearly.  I may not like where it takes me.  I might plead with God to change my destiny.  But I cannot not forget my God.  Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, my hunger made me stronger, not weaker.  Guess you weren’t paying attention that day in class!

Not Much Else

Yesterday morning was largely spent blogging about drones and our failure to examine the wisdom of a policy of killing people termed enemies from afar.  It was a computer morning, with lots of research at my fingertips.

The afternoon, by contrast, was person-to-person: dropping off some food and visiting with an older couple then visiting with a family saying good-bye to a beloved dear one in the end stage of life – a life too soon taken by the vagaries and injustice of cancer.

All politics may be local, but all grief is global – none escape it.

And what occurs to me in reflecting on my day spent amidst so much grief and pain is that life itself brings so much challenge, so many tears, that I wonder that we would add to the mix with our own contribution to the grief of self and others.

Before going to seminary, a preacher I know would often say to my many questions, “It’s not a salvation issue and God will take care of it.”

She frustrated the nonsense out of me at the time, but I have grown to new appreciation of that wisdom.  So much I fret about resides in the hands of God.  So often when I want to get something ‘right’, it’s about telling another that they’re wrong.  So often when I want to ‘know’ for sure, what I really want is reassurance that in the court of public opinion, I am the winner.  So often what I worry about doesn’t matter at all.

Sitting with the dying and their loved ones reminds me of that: most of what I sweat day-to-day really doesn’t matter at all.  And God will take care.  So what does God need of me?  My helping hands, and, I suspect, not much else.