Day 152: The Real Deal

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven - not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  John 6:57-58

As Jesus explains the concept of feeding on him, the imagery becomes more poignant.

Aside from the direct command to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood (which is quite shocking enough in itself), he also begins to draw the connection to the consuming of manna in the wilderness.  And, when he describes that, he says that all of their ancestors died regardless.  That's quite harsh.

The thing is, though, that the manna was given to the Israelites almost as a concession.  The Israelites were complaining to Moses about being in the desert, so God sends down manna for them to eat.  And, although they ate the manna, they continued to complain against God, and they even turned away from God.

But now, Jesus comes into the world on his own divine accord, offering us this heavenly bread of life.  Jesus comes to us in peace, offering us this life, offering us his love.  We have a choice.  Either we can take the offer or leave it.  When it's like that in plain words, it can seem ridiculous for us to turn it away, just as how the Israelites were ungrateful for food that had appeared miraculously in the middle of the desert.

Yet, we allow for many other things to get in the way and blind our view of Jesus.  Rather than seeing Jesus' love for us, we start to see our own lives, which are marred by things such as doubt, pride, anger, and hatred.  When we reexamine our lives, we start to think, in our pride, that we don't want to lower our guards.  We don't want to give up our grudges to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus means to leave our own lives behind, the lives that were defined by society and not so much by God.  We've become so attached to our society-dictated lives that we think that anything that is simply divine is not real.  We start to think that it's too good to be true.  So, we feel comfortable pushing Jesus' hands aside.

We need to listen to Jesus in our lives, and that will only happen whenever we give Jesus our time.  We need to pray in silence, where we hear neither the sounds of the outside world nor of our minds.  We need to listen to God in our prayers and in our bible reading.  We need to see Jesus before us.  When we do that, we will be able to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Of course, once we taste that perfection, we will never want to turn it away.  We will forever feast on the good, life-giving bread.

Day 065: Lawn of Life

He who works his own land will be satisfied with bread, but those who pursue vain things are in need of discernment.  Proverbs 12:11

Here is a commentary on how we should be living our lives.

On the surface, this admonishes us to live productively.  The second half of the proverb is pretty vague when it is taken by itself, but in context with the first half, it suggests that living one's life just to judge somebody else's is pointless.  As a musician, I have learned that I can't be directing my craft towards every set of ears out there.  In fact, I shouldn't even be directing my practice just to somebody else's ears.  I need to play for myself.  I have learned over the years about what I like and what I don't like in music.  I've been quite fortunate to have teachers direct me towards understanding my preferences and keeping consistent with them.

In the same way, we should be living our lives concerned with our own tasks at hand.  We have so many different challenges facing us each day that we can't handle all of them at once.  Just think about the things that you are already leaving off for tomorrow, next week, or even next year.  Yet, we think it's alright to make sure we are judging all the people around us as well.  That is what our issue is.  When we start bringing other people's faults (according to our own perceptions) into our lives, we end up wasting so much of our precious energy on the things that don't benefit us.  Rather than finishing up our projects for our school/job, we stand in a corner, burning with anger about someone else who - at least - is doing something.

Think about the image of land.  This past winter (which barely existed) has been quite an ugly one with our front yard.  I didn't bother to rake the leaves this winter, and the grass stopped growing, so I figured that everything was going to be alright until the next rains would come and wash away the superfluous leaves.  However, a bunch of crane flies decided to lay their eggs among the leaves instead.  Now, for the past two months, we have had quite a few crane flies just hanging out all over our front lawn, cars, trees, doorway, and, with little effort, in our own house.  Now that plants are starting to grow once again, there are very tall weeds growing around our rose bushes.  My own land is quite horrid at the moment.

Now, place that entire concept of land into the proverb.  Our lives are just as horrid as that land.  We face many different challenges with the land: weeds, flies, gardening, pruning, cutting grass, raking.  When we do the work that is necessary in our lives, we will receive our daily bread, and we will be satisfied.  When we tend to our spiritual lives, we will receive the bread of eternal life.

During this Lent, ask God to turn your discipline into daily bread.  Ask God how you can work on all the challenges you are facing.  Then, go and do them.