Day 10: Jesus Is Better Than A Lettuce Wrap (And That's Saying a Lot!)

John 6:25-27
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”


Have you ever noticed that food makes our world go round? It's engrained in us from the day we are born. Brennan eats every three hours, and buddy, let me tell you. He can't read a clock, but you could set your alarm by that kid. He knows exactly when it's time to eat. And that is something most of us never outgrow. My family once ended up at Canada's worst restaurant eating boiled chicken covered in english pea gravy on top of a slice of loaf bread (yes, really, that was the "chicken sandwich") because when my mother said "stop and eat", it meant NOW. Love you mom. :)


Here Jesus says that we are to yearn for Him the way we yearn for P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps. I L-U-V those lettuce wraps. I think about them in the night. I actually dream about them. I can taste that lettuce wrap right now, and it's CRUSHING me that I do not have one in hand right this very minute. There are a lot of embarrassing (and possibly illegal) things I would do to get my grubby little hands on a tasty, delicious lettuce wrap. The question is... do I want Jesus that much? Do I think about him at every hour of the day? Am I constantly longing for him? 


And the great thing about this food is that it never spoils. It's not in Huntsville where you can only get ahold of it every once in a blue moon. The restaurant never closes. It doesn't make you fat. And best of all, it's FREE. It's accessible to everyone, not just those with the right means or location or time. 


As Scarlett would say, "As God as my witness, I will never be hungry again!"

Day 6: Brain Freeze

John 6:15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.


This little verse right here is why I want to do this study. I would have skipped right over it, and there's no telling how many times I have done just that while reading this passage. But now I'm being "forced" to stop and take a look at it, and I think that's the point. 


When confronted with a problem/situation/whatever you want to call it, Jesus went off. Alone.


Aloneness is frowned on in our society. In our constantly connected state, even our "alone" times are not really alone. We have the radio on while we take a shower, the tv on while we get dressed, radio again for the drive to work, and then the email/phone/meeting chaos starts! It's no wonder we suffer from anxiety and insomnia and all sorts of other stuff... our brains never get a chance to shut off. Maybe what we need is a little more quiet time. Meditation time. To withdraw to a mountain by ourselves. For me, I've been trying to leave my radio off during my morning commute. It gives me time to focus on the day ahead, pray, and generally get my brain going in the right direction. Clutter-free. And I really, truly want to do even better because it really, truly helps.


Give yourself permission to do a brain shut-down now and again. Jesus did.  

Day 5: Faith Feast

John 6:1-14


Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.

When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”

There were two things about this passage that stuck out to me: first, I am a Philip. Philip is a pragmatist here, and I think if you had interviewed him about why he said what he said (“It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”), he would have said, "Look, I was just being real!" My job is to be real. Every day I get up in the morning and go to my office and sit at my desk and look for potential problems, and then try to figure out ways to solve them. I figure out a cost/benefit analysis for everything I do. So I'm sorry to say that if Jesus had asked me that question, I probably would have responded the exact same way. The problem was that Philip didn't know who he was with. ("You didn't know who you were with! It's from The Godfather." Er, sorry.) Philip didn't understand how BIG his God was, and that God was getting ready to show that bigness. And the thing is, we still don't get it. We analyze and figure and reason, and we forget that God is bigger than all of those things. We forget that sometimes he chooses to uses our weakness to serve his purpose just in case we get the crazy idea that it was our own doing.

Andrew, on the other hand, had some small idea of what was happening. If it had been me, I'd have run right past that boy with the measly loaves and fish. I wouldn't have even considered it worth mentioning. He was unsure, he was questioning, but he at least had the wherewithal to bring it up. And then Jesus took his tiny little mustard seed amount of faith and used it to feed a small town's worth of folks. It's actually a pretty clever little analogy that the scriptures have laid out for us... almost like the teensy portion of bread and fish is reminiscent of Andrew's faith. And with God, he takes a little and makes it a lot. We just have to take the first step, even if we sound stupid or what we're saying seems impossible.

Second, the last verse really hit home with me because it reminds me how fickle we humans are. Here they are, a year before literally calling for Jesus' head, and they're saying that surely this is the Prophet who has come into the world. It's amazing, actually, how quickly they forget. How quickly we forget. I see it all the time with youth group kids who go to Challenge Youth Conference or camp or whatever, and they say, "Surely this is Jesus who has come into the world." For that instant, they see him for who he is. And then they go back to school, to life, whatever, and they forget. But the thing is, it's not just fifteen-year-olds who do that. So do the rest of us, probably even more often than they.

God forbid that we ever forget what the Lord has done for us.

Day 4: The Plan

Okay, so I've been doing some research, and... drum roll please... we have a plan. I have decided to use Ken Palmer's Harmony of the Gospels chronology for the purposes of this blog. Starting tomorrow, I'll address one "event" from the last year of Jesus' life each day using Palmer's very detailed (and handy) chronology chart. I plan to start with the feeding of the 5000. The reasons for this are long, murky, and likely boring, but the bottom line is that I think there's a good likelihood that his final year would have begun somewhere around this time. Plus, could there be a better story with which to begin? A hungry crowd, a food shortage, and a compassionate God = excellent blogging potential!

For tonight, I want to post one of my favorite songs of all time, by (no lie) one of my favorite groups of all time... the Von Trapp Children. Yes, friends, the real-life Sound of Music family has grandchildren, and they can sing the pants off you. I got such great comments and emails about the Mary post yesterday, and maybe that's why this song has been on my mind all day.

Enjoy.

Day 3: Magnificat

I can already tell that having an eight-month-old son is going to make this study all the more real to me. Yesterday I was eating lunch with my 90-year-old grandmother (just hold on... these two sentences will tie together in the end. I promise.), and she asked my how many years I had turned on my birthday. "Thirty-three," I said. She just shook her head and said, "It's hard to believe my first little granddaughter is thirty-three years old." I told her about what I had been thinking about... about Jesus dying at thirty-three. Her response: "He died so young. But the one I always think about is Mary."

You see, my grandmother's identity is completely intertwined with her children and grandchildren. She is a mother. She is a grandmother. And even though she has an idea of what Jesus went through for her, she has an even better grasp of what Mary must have faced.

Now that have my own little boy, I can understand her perspective a little better. And the thing is, as far as I can tell, Mary never questions God or His purposes. I don't know whether Jesus warned her what was going to happen, but I have a funny feeling that he did. He warns the apostles, he talks about it in public settings, and Mary's been pondering all this in her heart since the day he was born. I believe she knew. And she was there at every step.

One of my favorite passages in the entirety of Scripture is Mary's conversation with Elizabeth in Luke 1. Chances are that Mary is a young teenager when she says these words, which makes it all the more evident why the Lord chose her above every other woman who has ever lived. May we all have the faith of Mary, to understand that His ways are higher than our ways, and to say:

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation." Luke 1: 46-50