Bread for the Journey
BSF ended this past Tuesday and Wednesday morning I found
myself pondering where to read now that I was ‘free to move about the country’.
I soon found myself in 1 Kings with Elijah.
I was in chapter 19 when vs 7 struck me. “Then the angel of the Lord
came again and touched Elijah and said, ‘Get up and eat some more, or the
journey ahead will be too much for you’.”
As I thought about myself and all of the women in my study group
and the journeys ahead of us I could not help but think about how apt this was
to every single one of us; not a one of us could in good conscience ignore it. We had been discussing our prayer requests
just the day before. Some of them faced
physical battles with surgeries, another emotional battles while she walks
through a divorce with her daughter, another fatigue and hopelessness as she
cares for a bed-ridden loved one, another faces the deployment of her young
husband and a summer alone in a new town with no friends, another a must do
move to another state, taking her teenage kids with her but having to pull them
away from their father to do so, another desperately trying to send her
daughters to college but without the resources, another a lost job, another a
summer alone with her autistic son, and the list goes on and on and on. And these are just the people I know and have
come to love.
I began to pray for each one of them, and as I did, the
reality struck me anew: it is of utmost
importance that we pay attention to the kind of bread we eat. The bread Jesus offers us is the bread of
life – His Words. (Deut. 8:3 “He did
this (gave them manna) to teach you that people do not live on bread alone;
rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”). We have access to them every day. They are the only thing that will sustain us
through the journey ahead.
As I look toward the summer and the long period of time we
have without our regular Bible Studies and without our regular ‘meals’ we have
consumed throughout the year, my heart aches for all who will try to do it on
their own; for those who will try to make it through the summer without feeding
themselves consistently. They will grow
weary and will eventually react like one not well-fed. Don’t let this be you. Every single one of us – young and old, rich
and poor – we all have a journey ahead of us in the next few months. It will be fraught with difficulty and it
will likely wear us out. We will need
strength to respond to others properly, to help our children be joyful and
safe, to fight the fights that need to be fought and to rest in the sun God
will provide. But don’t forget, we also need
to respond to our circumstances with calm certainty of who is in control of
them. This is peace and we cannot know this
peace unless we know the God who provides it.
We cannot know the God who provides it unless we read His words and
listen to what He says.
I heard recently that Christians do not find significant
change in their lives unless they find at least four times a week to have a
solid amount of time reading and praying.
That’s it – four times a week of 20-30 minutes. It’s not asking for an hour every morning and
never sleeping in or staying up late.
It’s just four chunks of time throughout our week. We do more than that for our physical health
with our food and our exercise, surely we can do that much for our spiritual
health. I mean one chunk is done on
Sunday morning at our church service.
Now we just need to find three more.
Do you remember where I started? Fifteen minutes. Yes, fifteen minutes. I told God I could not spare (or handle) any
more than 15 minutes a day but that I would give him that. And I did.
Then it became 20, 30…now I get up happily every morning as this time is
my very favorite time of the day – time alone, with my Father. My friends do it differently; one at night
after her kids go to bed, another during naps, and another on lunch break. You pick, just fit in 20 minutes, three days
a week (and go to church).
In vs 8 the Bible records Elijah’s response: “So he got up
and ate and drank, and the food gave him strength to travel for forty days and
forty nights…” God’s Word will give us
strength and it won’t be just for the short term, it will be for the entire
journey. The strength it gives endures
and satisfies for long periods of time; it sustains us and carries us through
the longest of journeys.
I feel impressed to challenge each one of us to take a look
at our summer and commit to making sure we are diving into the word of God for
a significant amount of time several days every week. It isn’t just about doing it because we know
we ‘should’ or everyone says we should, it is about believing that it will
sustain us for our entire journey and it is all we need. God will meet us and His Words WILL sustain
us. As you look at your summer and see
the break and the freedom and the sunshine, don’t forget to keep yourself
well-fed.
