In this week's scriptures, we find people following Jesus in hopes of another free meal (along with the sideshow of the amazing multiplication of fish and bread). Who can blame them? The next meal for these people was often a mystery, represented a lot of work, and cost them greatly. So a hand-out of local staples which didn't require catching fish or baking bread was a welcome reprieve from the standard way of doing life.
In the Old Testament, we find David hoping his armies will take it easy on his son Absalom. When they don't and his son is killed (in the process of trying to overthrow and murder his father) David weeps and grieves the loss. In the Psalm, David cries-out to God, and receives what he needs.
We are an amazing array of need. We wake with the need of companionship and food. So we fine tune the signal coming through a cable or the air, and welcome voices and faces into our room to keep us company. They tell us about our world and weather, then tell us of our needs for deoderant, pills to make us manly and insurance to keep our stuff. The remind us our car is a clunker, we have the wardrobe of a loser, and that a lawyer could help us to sue our neighbor.
And then we go out into our day, full of needs, working hard to be able to purchase all of these things that will fill us and fulfill us.
Isaiah spoke of buying bread that would not fill. Jeremiah tells us of a living well that never runs dry, but that we prefer to dig our own sisterns that won't even hold water. Jesus says He is the bread of life. And we go out looking for something more extreme than God-friendship.
How are you fulfilling your needs?
Peace to you.
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