Heart Tracks - Journey Food

"But Jesus said, 'You feed them.' 'With what?' they asked, 'it would take a small fortune to buy food for all this crowd.' 'How much food do you have?' He asked. 'Go and find out.' " Mark 6:37-38

Reading this passage this morning, I saw, through Him, a new way for me to look at it. Most often, we see this exchange between Jesus and His disciples as one where He is seeking to teach them that it is not what we have that is countable that matters. It is what we have in Him, that little is much when He is in the midst of it. That's a good and correct teaching, and we certainly need to walk in a faith that is confident of His miraculous ability to provide His abundance out of our lack. Yet there is something else I see here. Something we don't take stock of nearly as much as we should.

Jesus asked them how much "food" they had. He told them "go and find out." He once told His disciples that He had "food to eat that you know nothing about." He spoke of a spiritual, Kingdom food found only in His Father. It is that food that sustained Him during His 40 days in the desert. It is that food that nourished Him through all of His earthly ministry. That food which is available to those who are His, and it is so through the ministry of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus always knew just how much of that food was His. Do we? Might it be time for us to find out?

Jesus also said that we don't live by bread alone, but "by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God." That Word is a living Word. That Word is literally His Life. Even more than our bodies need physical food, do our spirits, hearts and minds need His spiritual. Yet I believe it is our supply of this food that we are most likely to neglect. It is this food that we're likely to find ourselves short of in the deep needs, emergencies, and crises of life. We wander along feeding on and trusting in the "nourishment" this world offers. Yet when faced with needs and dangers far beyond our ability, we find ourselves seriously lacking, even bereft of the food Jesus knew and spoke of. Such a "diet" comes from an intimacy with Him, His Word, and His Life, that our worldly understanding really knows nothing about. It is wisdom to journey through this life knowing just how much of it we are in possession of. This will mean consistent "checking", the regular taking of our spiritual pulse. It is also this that we're prone to neglect.

The Father directed Elijah to undertake a journey in His will, and told Him as well that this journey "was too great for Him." Every journey in and for Him is. The difference between our victory and our defeat will be found in the "food" we carry. What and how much is ours? Perhaps it is time for us to "go and find out."

Blessings,
Pastor O