Starving

 Meanwhile the disciples urged Him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But He told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” So the disciples asked one another, “Could someone have brought Him food?”… John 4:31-33

These verses from John 4 take place after Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. Before His encounter with her, the disciples had gone into town to seek food for their meals. When they returned, foodstuffs in hand, they wanted Him to eat, but He refused, telling them that He was nurtured by the very Word and Presence of His Father. All earthly fare was only a poor substitute for that. The disciples, as one of my pastor friends put it, loaded up on junk food from the local "McDonald's," while Jesus was partaking of the manna from heaven that never runs out.

It brings the question for us as to where we look for our nurture? Do we, like the disciples, know nothing of the spiritual food that Christ speaks of? Have we been so long dining at our earthly "eateries" that we have no hunger for the Kingdom fare the Lord speaks of? I speak of something far more than meat and bread. I speak of that which we depend upon for our vitality. Literally, what is vital to us? What is our lifeblood? Is it the things of this earthly realm, or is it the manna of the Kingdom? The bread of His life?

I've been going through my old prayer journals of late, and composing them into several hardback notebooks. In doing so I came across something I wrote down a number of years ago. It concerned a Nepalese woman who had come to Christ. She lived in a very poor village, and the hardships for her were real, but of this she said, "Though I face difficult times, there is joy in my heart because I know Jesus. If I don't eat for 2-3 days, that's fine, but if I don't attend Bible study, I feel so unsatisfied." I ask you; are you as humbled by her words as I am? Can you envision yourself in her life in any way? Could you, we, be so in love with Him, with hearing from Him, with His Words of life, that we could forgo literal food so long as we could feed on His bread of life? For her, He and His Word were life. Are they to us?

Food and water are two needs the body cannot long go without, and I love how Jesus uses His interactions with the Samaritan woman and His disciples, to show them their need for His bread and water of life. The water in the well had limits. His Living Water had none. The food the disciples gathered could be consumed but then be gone. His Bread Of Life can never run out. We gorge ourselves on the junk food and soda pop of this world, all the while starving to death for lack of His Words of Life. Indeed, in the Old Testament, the Father said through His prophet that there was a famine upon the land of Israel. Not a famine for bread and meat, but for the very Word of God. I believe such a famine is not only upon our land today, but upon His church as well. If the Nepalese sister were in our church, how odd and out of place would she seem to most of us? How many of us would see her as just being way too intense in her faith?

I once heard a Doctor speaking about those who are grossly overweight. He said that many of them were literally starving to death. Despite their great intake of food, what the consumed did not have sufficient nutrients that they body had to have. They were starving to death though they ate to the full. How many of us, in the spirit, are starving to death because our lives do not get the spiritual nutrients we must have to thrive, even to live?

What our lives consume, live on, will either cause us to live to the full, or slowly die. May we each discover and partake of the food the world knows nothing of, but is freely offered in Christ. He sets His feast before us. Will we come, or continue to do business with McDonald's?

Blessings,

Pastor O