Today’s
Scripture Reading (December 1, 2018): Deuteronomy 8
We would never truly live without knowing that one day we will die.
Pleasure would not be nearly as enjoyable except that we know pain. Our
understanding of good would not be as clear if it were not for the fact that we
have experienced evil. It is the yin and yang of life. We live in a world of
duality. And understanding of one state invariably results in our experience of
the opposite condition. The richness of what we know is because we understand
both sides of the experience; the good and the bad. And so, in this light, our
negative experiences might not be something that should be avoided, but rather embraced because it enriches our experience
of the positives that life offers.
Moses teaches Israel that God had humbled them. Moses argues that God was the origin of their hunger. He made them
hungry because he already had the solution to their hunger in his mind. He was
going to feed them in a way that could only reveal the providence of God. He
was going to feed them with manna, bread from heaven. No group of people had
ever been fed in this way before. And the giving of manna would end when Israel
left the wilderness and entered into the Promised Land. Neither Israel nor any
other nation on earth would ever be fed
in this way ever again. For this moment in time, God was going to step into
history to change the conditions of their lives. He would allow them to be hungry so that they could truly understand what
it meant to be filled and have their hunger satiated.
But that was not the only purpose of this unique bread from heaven. God
was going to show them what life would be like without him so that they would know the possible difference that following
God might make on their lives. God could feed them from heaven, but that was
not all that they were going to require from him in the coming years. Life was
going to demand so much more.
Too often we would be content with God feeding us and taking care of our
basic needs, often so that we can go on and live our lives as we might want.
But God wants more than just to provide us with
the basics. He still wants to teach us that life depends on more than the
things that we put into our stomachs. Life depends on everything that comes out
of the mouth of God.
It is no accident that Jesus quotes this verse during his wilderness
temptation. Satan’s temptation was that Jesus could fill his stomach by turning
a rock into bread, an act that would not be all that different from God’s
feeding of Israel with manna in the wilderness. But for Jesus, manna was
neither enough nor what he needed. In this desperate moment in the wilderness,
and the many desperate moments that were to come, Jesus craved the presence of
God. The hunger of Jesus and his experience with Satan in the wilderness only
made him desire the good of God even more.
And it is this craving that we need in our lives as well; through all the
moments of our lives.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Deuteronomy 9
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