The Bread of Life
"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry" (Matthew 4:1-2).
If I was to pick a top ten understatements in the Bible, this might be #1. (I love the King James version: “afterwards He was an hungered.”) The notion of being in a wilderness, a stranger in a strange land, has hit me harder this year than any in my memory. The 1989 Bob Dylan song, “Everything Is Broken” about the fallen state of affairs here on Earth resonates in a big way. I’m fine with being out of step with the world’s prevailing winds because that can be a sign of the mind of Christ taking root. But it’s a relatively new experience when my brother and I hear something in the public square and I hear tomato and my brother hears bicycle. Wait.. what? How is that tomato a bicycle? Are you insane? I’m left with the classic test question. Is it
If I was to pick a top ten understatements in the Bible, this might be #1. (I love the King James version: “afterwards He was an hungered.”) The notion of being in a wilderness, a stranger in a strange land, has hit me harder this year than any in my memory. The 1989 Bob Dylan song, “Everything Is Broken” about the fallen state of affairs here on Earth resonates in a big way. I’m fine with being out of step with the world’s prevailing winds because that can be a sign of the mind of Christ taking root. But it’s a relatively new experience when my brother and I hear something in the public square and I hear tomato and my brother hears bicycle. Wait.. what? How is that tomato a bicycle? Are you insane? I’m left with the classic test question. Is it
- a) I’m crazy, he’s sane
- b) He’s crazy, I’m sane
- c) We’re both crazy
- d) We’re both sane
- e) All of the above.
Answer e) is correct. There is objective truth. One of us may be more right than another. But… am I humble enough to live in the world of e)? Can I reject someone’s judgment but not them? Admittedly, the jury’s still out on that. However, I can learn from how Jesus responded to His wilderness experience. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Right now for me that bread tastes like “judge not, lest ye be judged," “the same measure you use to forgive your brother will be used on you,” and “our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” If you find yourself adrift in a wilderness this Lenten season, the Bread of life may be just the thing.
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