It's Personal! (part 2)

 You will have your fill of bread; then you will know that I, Yahweh, am your God (Ex. 16)

How can we know that God is close to us, that He hears our prayers, and that He cares about our needs?  Jesus taught us to ask for our daily bread -- that's about as close to our daily needs -- some would say, the "little things"--- as you can get, I think.  The Book of Exodus tells us that God heard their cries in slavery and sent Moses to deliver them; then He heard their cry in the wilderness and sent bread (and quail) to feed them.  In fact, He told Moses, You will have your fill of bread; then you will know that I am your God.  

Anyone who has been through a natural disaster is likely to "know" how close and personal God is.  After going through Hurricane Katrina, there were many Moses in my life, starting with the stranger who walked me out of the house with no door in the midst of downed electrical lines and fallen trees all around, the firemen who just happened to be coming along in a school bus picking up refugees at that exact moment that we arrived across the tracks beyond which no vehicle could drive....and on and on.  It's a long story of God's providence, providing exactly what I needed at the moment I needed it.  Finally, I arrived in Natchez, Ms. where Father David O'Connor, another "Moses," provided a place for the family to re-gather and stay until we could find shelter.  Heading to the mall to find clothes, I happened into a bookstore instead (my daily bread), reached immediately for a book called Abraham by Bruce Feiler, flipped it open to a random page and read this: 

And the bible says, "I want you to have total trust in me, Abraham." You're not going to know where your next meal is coming from.  You're not going to know where your next home is.  If you're going to be in covenant with me, you have to trust me with every cell in your body.  And if you do that, I will bless you (p.48).

At that moment in my life, nothing could have been appropriate or striking to my situation! "I'm there!" I said to God. "I'm there right now!" We were even totally dependent on others for our daily bread, given that we had no access to cash, with all electrical systems down and banks closed for God knew how long!  Someone had given us 150 dollars on a Walmart card, for underwear and clothing, and that was our bank account for the moment.  Somehow, I did find the cash for Feiler's book, and that was my first purchase after Katrina --- and it did provide the bread I needed to get me through the next few months. ("Not by bread alone," Jesus had said, "but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.")

Bruce Feiler says, in his discussion of Abraham's journey, "Departure is paramount to Christian identity.....We want the security of knowing that we have a house, we have a job, our children are protected, we've got a savings account. And God says that's not going to bring the security you really need in your life" (p.49).

Anyone who has ever meditated on the suburb poetry of Psalm 23 knows how personal faith is:  The Lord is my Shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.  This came from David, the shepherd boy, who learned as child the closeness of the Lord: Your servant (David) has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it....Yahweh who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine (I Sam. 17).

Later in his life, when being pursued through the wilderness by Saul's armies, David again relied on the faithfulness of God to deliver him and to provide for him his daily bread and water when he had no access to either: You provide a table for me in the presence of my enemies (Ps. 23).  

One of the best commentaries on this psalm came from a shepherd, who line by line describes the implications of the psalm for the sheep: A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm by W. Philip Keller. Everyone who wants to appreciate this psalm beyond a funeral reading of it needs to read Keller's book.

In the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah, God rails against the bad shepherds of his people.  "I myself will shepherd them"; says the Lord.   "I myself will make them lie down" (Ezekiel 34).  And finally, Jesus Himself makes the claim in John 10: I am the Good Shepherd (promised throughout the Scriptures).

The following quote may seem off the topic, but at a dinner party once, where the Eucharist was being discussed as only symbolic, Flannery O'Conner responded: "If it's just a symbol," she said, "then to hell with it!"  I feel exactly the same way about Jesus' words, I am the Good Shepherd.  If it's "just a metaphor," then to hell with it!