Frequent Flyer

Mark 8:1-10

      Does it seem as though you spend all your time traveling? Maybe it is stuck behind the wheel as you shuttle the kids to their various activities, multiple shopping trips, repair errands, social calls. Or maybe your work takes you to different places, security checkpoints, lost luggage, hotel lobbies, and boring cable. I don’t know about you but all the travel can get old. It is fun and exciting at first, but then the excitement wears thin.

      I don’t travel enough to get frequent flyer miles. If I did, I know where I would go. I would take about three weeks and travel __________, and take it very slow. What would you put in that blank? Where would you like to travel? Where would you use your frequent flyer miles if you could?

      It seems as though Jesus is always traveling. He has been in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee so many times. He has been to the seashore and back. As a good Jew, He has been to Jerusalem for the annual feasts. Even from the beginning of His life, traveling was a big component. His birth happened while Mary was on a trip!

      Our itinerary takes us today with Jesus on one of His speaking stops. He has been there three days, teaching, preaching, healing, and basically, transforming lives. People don’t seem to get enough of Him. They want to spend more time, but practical things seem to get in the way. Food! Their pesky stomachs need it.

      You can only carry a pack lunch for so many days. Bread gets old and hard to eat after a couple of days. And bread was a staple of their diet. We label this food group ‘carbs’ to obscure our understanding. Most cultures have carbs as the main part of what they eat. Grains or rice seem to be the preferences. I think we have perfected carbs, molding them into so many delicious and fattening forms. Yum!

      My wife was reading an article the other day that said many restaurant portion sizes are eight times larger than recommended. No wonder we have trouble with our weight. It is time to routinely use takeout boxes, time to share a meal, rather than each getting my own.

      So 4000 people have gathered and used up the food they had brought with them and the meeting is breaking up. Jesus is getting ready to go on to His next place, but some of the people have a long journey. They need some food to ensure they make it home.

      So Jesus challenges His disciples to provide some food. He presents the dilemma to them and sees if they have learned anything about the power of God at work in His life. They haven’t. But Jesus still provides.

      Have you learned the lessons you need for this journey we call life?

Inside Out

Mark 7:14-23

      Have you ever put a shirt on with the tag on the outside? If you have ever gotten dressed in the dark and in a hurry, you probably have. Kids do it all the time. Or they put the shirt on backwards with the tag under the chin. Now there are all those screen printings on T-shirts that help us keep things straight more often. Some of us who wear glasses appreciate not having to try and see the placement of the tag, or the printing where the tags used to be. It is easy to find the great big words and pictures!

      Some people live their lives like they wear their T-shirts. They don’t have the ability to control their emotions and they wear them for the whole world to see. You know they type. You bump into them in the store and they are ranting and raving at the cashier, or at customer service, or at their kids. They give you a ‘look’ when you happen to be in their way.

      Or their emotions get poured out when they meet you at a social function. Their pain gushes out. And then you pull out the mental list of all the problems that seem to have hit them in the past. They are a magnet for pain. Or at least they haven’t learned that always telling others about your pain is not socially acceptable.

      Some people live their lives driven from these inside emotions. They never take the time to consider making choices out of reason or commitment or principle. If they feel it, they must act on it. The list of social ills that is propagated and encouraged based on this belief is innumerable. All the self-indulgent behavior, from eating to elicit drug use, stems from following the emotions no matter the consequence.

      The religious leaders of Jesus’ day lived outside in lives. They had a set of rules that guided their behavior. If they wanted to do something, they always checked the rulebook to be sure they could do it. But their rulebook had become so complicated that their rules often contradicted God’s Law. What started out as a Helpful Guide to Being a Jew ended up being the very thing that prevented them from really being a Jew.

      One area of concern for these religious leaders was ritual purity. If they came in contact with a non-Jew, they were required to wash off that contamination. Each time they performed the ritual in reinforced their belief that they were better than the non-Jews because they kept their rulebook at hand and referred to it often. They spent a lot of time worrying about their food, where it came from and how it was prepared.

      Jesus brings clarity when clarity is needed. He tells us that food doesn’t matter. No food can separate you from God. No food can bring you closer to God. Menu options are limitless in His Kingdom. We can eat what we want without worrying about whether or not it pleases God. He is not concerned with our cholesterol numbers.

      Whole denominations would go out of existence if they understood these verses. Food doesn’t bring us closer to or push us further away from God. Our hearts do that.

The Problem

Mark 6:35-36

      One of the challenges in life is people who present their problems without providing any solutions. They come with an empty hand and say fill it. Or their solution requires someone else to do what they themselves should be doing. They want other people’s money to solve their problem. They fail to earn enough to pay for their out of budget purchases and they want someone else to take away the natural pain of foolish living.

      The disciples find themselves squeezed between the hungry crowd and their limited resources. We don’t know who started the “I’m hungry” discussion. It might have been one of the disciples’ hunger that was then projected onto the crowd. They might have not heard one peep out of the crowd about being hungry, but they were hungry.

      Or maybe one of them was starting to think ahead, to plan for the future and he saw the crowd and realized that hunger would create a problem for their travel home. Jesus had, after all, brought them here to get away from the crowds for some rest. So the proposed solution was to release them early and let them fend for themselves. But think about it. Could a local economy handle 5000 extra meals on short notice? Remember, this is an economy with very few restaurants. There were some, but probably not enough to handle this.

      Usually when people traveled they carried their own food, or stayed with Uncle Fred and his family along the way. And food preparation to a much larger portion of the day then than it does today. No refrigeration meant that if you were going to have any perishable items in your meal, it had to be purchased today. A run to the street market was a normal part of a day’s routine. And if you were traveling, you couldn’t rely on any of your own stock of food.

      So the disciples come with a solution to Jesus. They look at their earthly resources and realize the only logical solution is to pass along the responsibility for the next meal to the people. They had no way of meeting the need, so they had better give them time to seek out food for themselves. They had looked at their tangible assets and realized there was no way they could meet the need.

      I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my life when my available resources could not satisfy the need. An unexpected repair, an emergency medical situation, an unexpected diagnosis, a natural disaster, or an extra child. These and many others situations can cause you to look at what you have at your disposal and realize that you can’t meet the need. You don’t have the power to heal. Your credit score is so low, bowlers would love it as their bowling score. Baseball players would love it as their ERA.

      The disciples got one thing correct. They brought their problem and their solution to Jesus. They didn’t just drive ahead with their solution, they submitted it to Jesus for approval. AND they were willing to give it up when Jesus instructed them to do so. They weren’t so set on their way, that they missed His way.

Daily

Proverbs 12:11-14

Farming is an every day activity. When you work the land there is always something to do today, something that needs to be done today. If you think about dairy production, those cows need to be milked every day, often two times a day. So there can be no vacations, no time off. It is this day in, day out activity that produces food.

Our proverbs for today begin with this simple truth: if you work the land, you will get food. Everyone in their day had some connection to the land. They either farmed themselves, or their work supported those who did farm. If the farming stopped producing food, people went hungry. There was no leeway to chance speculative investments. There was no margin for error. Lives were on the line.

Being consistent in doing the right thing every day gives us roots. When the storms of life come our direction, and they will come to us all, we won’t be knocked off our foundation. But people whose words are inflated versions of their hollow cores will end up under attack with nowhere to go for protection. They want the protection of others, even if that protection was obtained through wicked means.

Our words and our actions need to match. We should not just be talking about making a difference in this dark evil world, we should be living our lives in such a way that the world is different.

The darker the world becomes, the more the light of Christ will shine. The greater the persecution, the greater God’s sustaining presence. The more hatred, the more Christ’s love can flow through us to a hurting world. The more vile the words thrown our direction, the more loving the Good News of Jesus will sound.

It is precisely in times like this that Jesus can shine forth. When there are a million dim places, a spotlight can blend in. But when there is darkness, Christ’s light in us will shine. It will be blinding to those who oppose Him. It will lead the way for those who seek Him.

Economic Downturn

Proverbs 3:13-18

Silver and Gold. You must have heard the many ads telling us the virtue of owning it because its value never goes down. When I was young, gold was $32 an ounce. Now it is over $1500 an ounce. If only I had bought it when it was $32! But would I be rich? What does a hungry person need more, gold or food?

In today’s proverbs, wisdom’s value is compared to both gold and silver. Wisdom is more valuable than both. If the money you have in your bank account gets seized by the government, as is happening in Cyprus, what would you do? For many, their character would emerge and anarchy would erupt. I don’t want to scare you, but it would get very messy.

Verse sixteen tells of the rewards of wisdom in contrast to the value of gold and silver. Wisdom will bring long life. Why is this so? I know for me personally, money gets my blood pressure rising. There have been times in my life when money was very tight, when finding a little cash for the next meal seemed out of reach. We even had food stamps for a short period of time. When I think about retirement, and the impending drop in disposable income, I can feel stress rising. And stress can kill.

So for me, I am working hard at learning to trust Him with that future. It is very peaceful when I leave that future in His hands. Verse seventeen says peace and wisdom walk the same roads. If I am walking in wisdom, peace will be there as well. I am learning to quiet my body when I feel it go into panic mode. I turn my thoughts to His care and provision.

Wisdom will be the food that gives us life, like the tree of life found in the Garden of Eden, and that tree in heaven, always bearing fruit year round. Wisdom continues to nourish.

So, I haven’t bought gold. I haven’t stocked up on survival food. I don’t own a working gun and I haven’t purchased a safe. Perhaps I am not being wise. Perhaps I am investing in other ways, ways that will last into eternity. Missions giving will span the divide of death, but gold won’t.