Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies
Psalm 23:5a
Most of us who are reading this live in a land of plenty. In fact, on the day I’m writing this – a few days after Thanksgiving – many of us are dieting desperately from too much plenty (knowing that we have a month of more and more plenty ahead of us).
“Plenty” is a modern luxury. Most people throughout most centuries have worked hard to just have “daily bread.” In America, we spiritualize the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread”; as in … tell God what you truly need. But for most people throughout most centuries, this has been an honest and desperate and daily and even hourly cry.
And it’s not just poverty that’s robbed centuries of plenty. It’s war and violence. The Saints are people like Corrie Ten Boom . She hid Jews from the Nazis. She was arrested and thrown into the concentration camps. And yet she discovered a feast in the midst of her enemies.
It wasn’t a physical feast – there was instead a literal starvation. The feast was God’s presence. The menu was God’s Word. She once said that God’s Word was so alive and His words were so fresh and true that it was like the ink hadn’t even had time to dry on the page.
In America today we’re blessed with plenty. (Even our poor are generally rich in comparison to the average condition in much of the world.) So … yes … in America today we’re blessed with plenty.
But we’re also cursed with plenty.
Most of us don’t know what it is to truly depend upon God for daily bread and daily life. Therefore, we limp along – depending partly on God … but mostly on our money, our talents, and the security of our nation.
Therefore, it’s generally and only the hard and humbling times – job loss, illness, grief – that get us closest to true dependence. And some – desperate -- draw closer to God in these moments. And some – shocked and offended -- draw further away.
Are you blessed or cursed by the plenty in your life? Are you fully depending on God.
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who likes to practice
dependence, trust, and thankfulness
in all circumstances … so that …
when the hard times come
I’m already fully connected
to God, my lifeline
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