I recently learned a fascinating fact about the North American elk, a giant species of deer which can weigh over 700 pounds. Because these massive creatures roam around the famously windy forests of the Rocky Mountains, the male elk make a surprisingly high-pitched shrieking sound to attract the attention of the females. They have developed this method so they can be heard above the cacophony of those howling winds. Scientists point out that in most situations, the larger the animal the lower their trademark mating calls, making the elk’s “bugling” an interesting exception to that “Big Animal = Deep Call” rule. (Check out this video to learn more!)   We’ve had some really blustery weather in the last few weeks, so I can understand the confusing effects of a windy day. Clothes and hair whipping around my face as the wind blows grass and gravel and dirt into the air. It’s distracting and disorienting. Even though the wind is just the movement of invisible air, that movement can bend tree branches and whistle around buildings like an incoming freight train. There are times when it’s all you can do just to stand in the middle of it.   That’s what life can feel like, gale-force winds coming at us from all directions. God is reaching out to us with His Word, His Spirit, His Love, but all we notice is the swirling gale. So in His merciful kindness, the Lord found a way to cut through all the noise. He found the exact right pitch to meet us where we are. He sent His Son as a human, a weak and vulnerable baby. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” He could’ve come in a crashing thunderstorm but He chose a baby’s cry.   And the call He makes to our hearts through Jesus, His Son, isn’t just for our connection to Him. It also changes how we live with one another. As we read in Philippians 2, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” The bugling call we use to reach out to others is supposed to be rooted in humility and selflessness.   There are times when the story of the Bible doesn’t seem to make sense. Why those people? Why that place? Why that time? But I’m confident God knew just what He was doing. The wickedness and disasters which often trip us up didn’t throw Him off His game. Just as He knew those Rocky Mountain winds would be loud before the trees had grown an inch, God knew that we needed Jesus—fully man and fully God, our king sacrificing Himself for us.

You had your last time to drive a car or read a book or solve a crossword puzzle. You've already knitted your last sock and sewn your last button and made your last pie crust. And today was your last day to go to the Symphony.   For the past fifty years, you’ve been worshipping at churches without musical instruments, but that wasn't always your regular Sunday routine. During the more than twenty years at the beginning of your life, you went to a little Nazarene church where you would hear the piano accompanying the hymns and eventually you would play in the song service. And because of that, I always thought you somehow heard the phantom echoes of a tinkling piano each time we sang a hymn. Standing up during a song, I would see your fingers play an imaginary keyboard on the back of the pew in front of us, your slender fingers designed for a pianist tapping along with the notes you sang in your bright soprano.   But today, when you went downtown to the grand auditorium to hear Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, your humming and rocking distracted the people around you. After the hubbub of intermission, things only got worse. The man in front of you told you to be quiet, so you left and you won’t go back. It’s just one more thing this disease has taken from you.   Sometimes we see the “last times” coming around the corner on the eve of big events, like the night before getting married or moving to a new place or graduating. If you’re in the right frame of mind, you pause as you realize that it’s the last time to lock the front door or walk down that particular hallway. But there are other times when you might not know you’re living through your last time.   So, for whatever time we have left with you, I want to stop and mark the end of something, even if it’s painful. I want to celebrate the things that made who you were, maybe deep down who you still are. You can still love music, but your fingers don’t remember how to play the notes on the piano which is gathering dust in your den, the one your piano teacher gave you a lifetime ago. It’s also the piano you used to play for us so that we could dance around the living room, picturing ourselves as graceful ballerinas even though we were mostly just three clumsy, little girls with active imaginations.   As we try to navigate this new world with you so altered, we feel like those same clumsy, little girls but without the imagined gracefulness. We’re unsure of our roles and how best to help. For now, we rejoice that you’re happy to see us and that you say over and over how much you love us. So turn up the volume on Tchaikovsky or Bach or Karen Carpenter, for that matter, and hum into the sunshine, because we don't know how many sunny days we have left.

There’s a song which I really love that we sing at our church a lot. The chorus comes straight from Psalm 86. It goes like this: “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” After singing it on a recent Sunday morning and getting it stuck in my head the rest of the day, I started really thinking about the words for the first time. Upon reflection, I came up with this crucial question: How in the world am I supposed to have an “undivided heart”?   King David wrote this psalm, so if by “heart” he means my mind and understanding and my whole inner self, then I can already tell this is going to be a tough one for me. I live my life doing and thinking about several things at the same time. In fact, like a lot of women, I pride myself on my high-level multi-tasking abilities. When we go on long car trips, I’m amazed at my (very intelligent) husband’s ability to just drive and drive while maybe listening to music. After a few miles tick by, sometimes I’ll ask him, “What are you thinking about?” He’ll almost always say, “Nothing.” This is ludicrous to me. I’m simultaneously thinking about what we need from Kroger, birthday present ideas for our kids, a plot twist in the sci-fi thriller series we’ve been watching, and so forth. So if “undivided heart” means “undivided mind,” then I’m in trouble.   So I did a little digging into Psalm 86. David wrote this very personal prayer asking God—David’s sovereign Lord—for help. As theologian Matthew Henry explains this prayerful psalm, “It is true, prayer accidentally may preach, but it is most fit that (as it is in this prayer) every passage should be directed to God, for such is the nature of prayer.” So I tried to digest each verse of this psalm as a prayer sent from a world-weary, down-trodden man to his Lord to see if this would give me a clue as to how I could develop an undivided heart.   Concentrating on verses 11-12, I read: “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.” Whether or not David meant for these to be sequential steps, I’m approaching them that way as I aim for a single-minded commitment to seeking God’s will. 1) Ask God to teach me His way.s 2) Then I’m more likely to rely on Him. 3) Ask God to give me a pure heart. 4) Then I’ll revere and submit to the wonder of God. 5) And the end result will be demonstrated by a life of praise and adoration.   As I studied these verses, I realized that my original uncertainty about my own “undivided heart” was for good reason. It is actually impossible for me to make this happen…without God. That’s why this is a prayer and not a tutorial. David knew how he was feeling—scared, destitute, surrounded by his enemies—so he took his worries to Adonai. Not because this was one potential solution among many, but because a God-trusting, name-fearing undivided heart beats for one reason—to glorify Him.   I heard one of our ministers say once that it’s not about making God your #1 priority. It’s about making Him THE priority. Full stop. And if this sounds too difficult or you think your heart has been sliced up into too many pieces for too long, take comfort from the words of Ezekiel 11. In this chapter, God is talking about His chosen people who have worshipped idols and done every other despicable thing they could think of, but He is ready to give them spiritual heart surgery. He said, “They will return to (the land of Israel) and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” Lord, give me an undivided heart!

Thirty or so years ago, I spent a few summer months in eastern Europe. I went with a group of college students who offered free English lessons, and we used Luke’s gospel as our textbook. Our weekdays were filled with teaching teenaged and adult students of varying levels of English competency, but on Saturdays we were allowed to do a little shopping.   I remember walking through a department store with a friend, looking for gifts for family back home. As we tried to compute the exchange rate of the price tags versus US dollars, we saw a row of brightly-colored t-shirts with the brand name “Lee” printed in the center. Only it was really Lee. The “e” letters were flipped upside and backwards so that it looked a bit like “LGG.” After we noticed this, we started seeing lots of American brands that were just a little inaccurate, and we realized they were knock-offs, counterfeit merchandise.   With the widespread use of AI bots and ChatGPT, more than ever I’m looking for something real, something face to face, something personal. Jesus had words of warning about those with a counterfeit message about the coming of the Son of Man. In Matthew 24, He said, “If anyone tries to flag you down, calling out, ‘Here’s the Messiah!’ or points, ‘There he is!’ don’t fall for it. Fake Messiahs and lying preachers are going to pop up everywhere. Their impressive credentials and bewitching performances will pull the wool over the eyes of even those who ought to know better.” ( The Message ) We didn’t invent deceit and phony propaganda in this century. We just keep creating new ways to trick people.   Fake Messiahs reminds me of the seventh book in C.S. Lewis’ masterful series, The Chronicles of Narnia . In the final book, which is aptly titled The Last Battle, the reader is introduced to Puzzle the Donkey and Shift the Ape. It’s the final days of Narnia and these animals have discovered a lion skin that made its way down a waterfall and into the pool where they hauled it out. Shift tricks Puzzle into wearing the lion skin which the ape sews up into a costume. The plan is for Puzzle to pretend to be Aslan, the Great Lion of Narnia, and Shift will speak for this counterfeit king. As the story moves forward, you see that Shift is using Aslan’s name to get the power he craves. Confusion and chaos reigns as good people follow a fake leader down a dangerous path. Shift even convinces some that Aslan is the same as Tash, the false god worshipped by the Calormenes.   Before the real identity of Puzzle is eventually revealed (please read this series if you haven’t, or do it again if you have), the human king of Narnia is a prisoner along with his trusty steed, Jewel the Unicorn. The king is considering his looming death and says, “Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death? That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”   Not to give everything away (did I mention that you should read this??), but Aslan does return triumphantly and the ending of the book is the most beautiful glimpse into heaven and eternal life. They experience a realness that’s unlike anything they’ve known before. The colors are inexplicably brilliant. It’s as if the world they knew before—even on its best days—was just a distorted reflection in a mirror. This is what I’m holding out for, a life so real and so rewarding that all else pales in comparison. No knock-offs and cheap imitations. I want what I can only get from living under the rule of the true King.

When I was a little girl I had a very high standard for beauty. (Not my own personal prettiness, of course. I was just your average, brown-eyed middle child with a haircut that looked like a brown mixing bowl with bangs.) My requirements for my “what makes you beautiful” list included blue eyes fringed with dark lashes and blond, curly hair. There should also be diamonds and pearls and satin and feather boas and high heels. I think you know where I’m going here…In my mind, if you looked up beautiful in the dictionary—especially in the late 70’s and early 80’s when I was a child—there would be a picture of the incomparable Miss Piggy. Sure, she was a Muppet, and I’ll admit she was a heartless diva, and don’t get me started on her on-again-off-again romance with Kermit. But she was still my ideal, the unattainable goal.   Now that I lived a little life and seen a few things, I’ve shifted what I know about beauty. Proverbs 31, often known as the chapter with the section about “The Wife of Noble Character,” is a big help as I try to understand what it really means to add beauty to the world. The woman described in verses 10-31 is resourceful, hard-working, generous, strong, wise, and dignified. She’s the total package. Her husband admires her and her children praise her (and not just because they want her to let them invite friends over for a sleepover). This list may seem impossible, but it’s not based on one particular person. It’s a catalog of goals for us to wake up each morning and try again (with God’s help) to aim for.   The list ends with “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” The Apostle Peter echoes these same sentiments in his first letter when he advises: “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves.” So that pretty much eliminates Miss Piggy from winning a Bible Inner Beauty Pageant.   These scriptures are great reminders for me about the thing our moms always told us: It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Now we just have to act like this is true with how we spend our time improving ourselves and the way we value each other. If we love the God-created person next to us by building him/her up without focusing on the exterior, we become better friends, better parents, better spouses.   The lyrics from one of my favorite songs by the band NEEDTOBREATHE has these lines in the chorus: I wanna hold you close, but never hold you back/Just like the banks to the river And if you ever feel like you are not enough/I'm gonna break all your mirrors I wanna be there when the darkness closes in/To make the truth a little clearer I wanna hold you close, but never hold you back/Just like the banks to the river.

Growing up in Nashville, I remember summer nights, going to an ice cream place with my parents and sisters called Dee’s Delights. Since we wouldn’t get out of the car, these impromptu outings were a chance to ride in the car barefoot. We’d eat our cones and shakes in the station wagon and it was, as the restaurant’s name would suggest, dee-lightful.   Delight is one of those words that I love, especially when it shows up in Scripture like in Psalm 18. This psalm, written by King David to praise God for rescuing him when he was in distress, starts off with this description: “For the director of music. Of David the servant of the Lord. He sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.”   Later we read, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support.” Then comes one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”   The idea of God looking at me and feeling delighted touches a deep place inside me. We all want to be accepted and loved and cared for, and to know that my Creator “reached down from on high and took hold of me” is humbling and comforting. He wants us to do more than just survive. He wants us to have the ease to roam freely in a spacious place, away from fear. And (bonus!) the assurance of His love for me, in spite of my flaws, makes it easier for me to love other flawed people.   I read a quote from author Max Lucado about this psalm that said, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart. And the Christmas gift he sent you in Bethlehem? Face it, friend. He’s crazy about you. When you feel overwhelmed and frightened by the “enemies” in your life, remember David’s song. God is your rock and your protector. He is able and willing to save you because he delights in you.”   On a good day, we might be tempted to think that God saved us because of how great we are…until we mess up. Then we realize that God must have different reasons for loving us that extend way past our ability to act right. (Thank goodness!) God saving us displays His mercy and His unique brand of justice. It gives us another reason to glorify Him, because we could never save ourselves. But in the same way that you look at the face of a newborn who you love so completely even before that baby has done anything for you, God delights in you.

Zonderkids I’ve started over reading the Bible chronologically again this year, so I find myself in the same place where I was last January—in the book of Genesis. Genesis means origin , so it’s the perfect name for the stories in the Bible that include creation—both of the natural world and the invention of human sin. We see the first man, the first woman, the first family.   In the Genesis story, we watch as God created His good world. By the end, He made animals and man (Adam), and Adam’s job was to care for God’s creation and name all the animals. God had called His creation “good” and “very good” (when it came to humans), but then God said something wasn’t good. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” It wasn’t just during those six days of creation that God was in the “making” business. He’s a constant Creator. He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, then he removed one of Adam’s ribs. He used that bit of bone to make a woman, Eve.   So Adam and Eve lived happily in this perfect paradise for some unnamed amount of time. God had given them one rule, that they shouldn’t eat from one particular tree. That was it! Just that one thing to avoid. Then the serpent showed up, and its main objective was to get them to break that rule. He didn’t use force or violence or threats. The serpent used doubt. It said to Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” And Eve answered that yes, they weren’t supposed to eat from that particular tree. She said that if they did, they would die.   Then the serpent said, “You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The Enemy used a grain of truth mixed with lies to sow doubt into Eve’s mind, because, as we see in the next few verses, their eyes were opened, and they did become aware of good and evil. Part of what the Serpent said was right, but his motivation for convincing Eve to disobey was never for her good.   So Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam. Then, they became aware of right and wrong and they also realized that they were naked, so they made clothes from fig leaves. They hid from God, and God called to them, “Where are you?” Then Adam said, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”   And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Of course, God knew exactly what had happened. He wanted them to say it aloud, to practice confession, the first step in repairing their relationship. Adam blamed their sin on Eve, and Eve blamed it on the serpent. Then God started handing out judgments. He cursed the serpent to crawl on its belly. He declared that Eve and the women who followed her would have pain in childbirth, and there would always be conflict between women and men. And Adam would be cursed to have to work the hard ground to eke out a living, then he would die.   At first glance, this feels like a pretty depressing story, but reading through it again recently, I came across something I hadn’t noticed before. When Adam and Eve first discovered that they’re naked they made ridiculous clothes for themselves. How does anyone even sew fig leaves together? But after God speaks to them, chastising them for their disobedience, He makes better clothes for them. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21)   Before God kicked them out of His perfect garden, He made them more appropriate clothes, clothes that would protect them from the harsh elements they would encounter outside of the garden. They felt shame over their nakedness and hid, but God—in his great mercy and grace—covered them with love and care. God’s kindness to us is more than we could ever deserve!

etsy.com When I was growing up, my sisters and I loved to make crafts with Shrinky-Dinks. If you’re not familiar with this art medium (that’s actually way too fancy of a category for this particular activity), then let me explain. Actually, I’ll let Wikipedia describe it: “Shrinky Dinks is a toy and activity kit consisting of sheets of  polystyrene  which can be cut with standard household scissors. When heated, the cut shapes become about nine times thicker while their horizontal and vertical dimensions reduce to about one-third the original size, resulting in hard, flat forms which retain their initial color and shape.” This craft project was most popular in the 1980’s, but it was originally invented by a couple of Wisconsin moms in 1973 as a Cub Scout project to do with their sons.   Several months ago, I got to relive my childhood as I baked a tray of Mother’s Day/Father’s Day keychains made from Shrinky-Dink plastic and decorated by kids in the preschool where I work. Pro Tip: You’ve got to turn on the oven light during this process to fully appreciate what happens. The thin squares of plastic were arranged across the baking sheet, with colored pencil markings which were a bit haphazard and didn’t always cover the entire area. But right before my eyes, I saw those pieces shrink. The corners lifted, then obediently stretched back down. They convulsed for half a second, before lying flat again. Then the timer buzzed, letting me know that it was time to take them out of the oven. Now the colors looked more vibrant and the pieces became sturdier. And none of that would’ve happened without the intense heat of the oven. (You could also use an Easy Bake Oven, if you’re feeling especially nostalgic!)   If those little pieces of plastic had feelings, I’m sure they wouldn’t want to go through the pain and difficulty of their time spent in the oven, but that’s what brought about their new and better versions. It’s like we read in several places in a letter that the Apostle Peter wrote to many of the churches in Asia Minor to encourage them as they faced persecution. For instance, Peter said, “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”   A few chapters later, he said, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed…If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.”   And these moments of suffering aren’t for nothing. They have a purpose. 1 Peter 5:10 says, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” We may want to avoid the trials—I mean, what do you expect from a bunch of flimsy plastic like use?—but God never wastes anything. He’s refining us and building up our faith. Also, there’s a prize waiting for us on the other side, and it’s even better than a handmade keychain.

There are certain Bible stories that I remember hearing as a small child in Sunday School class. Flannel board set up with the colorful story pieces spread out on the table, the teacher would launch into these amazing tales about a giant falling after he was hit by a single stone or a wall coming down after a week of marching. A man-swallowing fish or a perfect garden or a den of hungry lions. Signs like a wet fleece on dry ground or a rainbow curving in the sky. Good guys and bad guys. A manger followed by miracles. A cross followed by an empty tomb.   One of my favorite Bible stories was about Jesus calming the storm. The flannel cut-out of a scalloped sea would be placed along the bottom of the board, then a wooden boat would be added. Clouds and bolts of lightning would appear in the sky. I love this story for the power it displays, but I noticed something new as I took a lap through Mark 4 recently.     Jesus had been teaching and healing, healing and teaching. Crowds of hurting and hungry people followed his every move. Exhausted, Jesus told his friends that he needed a break. “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake,” he suggested. Then verse 36 says, “Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.” Just as he was . That phrase stood out to me. If you read what happened before this, you see his physical state. He was weary. And when you continue with the story, you realize that Jesus was so tired that he slept through a “furious squall” with giant waves breaking over into the boat so that it nearly capsized. The desperate screams of his friends as they attempted to maneuver the boat and bail out the rising water didn’t initially wake him.   Eventually, they roused him from his deep sleep. “Don’t you care if we drown?” they shouted. I suppose they asked this about themselves, but maybe it was disbelief that he wasn’t concerned for his own sake. Each of the three gospels where this story is recorded mention what happened next. He got up. I imagine this was one of those “push-yourself-up-from-where-you’re-sleeping” moves. You groan a little and sigh. His exhaustion didn’t disappear, but he was moved by their fear and hopelessness. I don’t know what they were expecting him to do, but, by their reactions, I guess it wasn’t this: He ordered the wind to be quiet. He commanded the waves to be still. And suddenly the world was completely calm.   He asked his disciples, “Why are you so worked up? After everything you’ve seen, do you still have no faith?” Adrenaline still pulsing through their bodies, Jesus’ followers were terrified. They thought that deciphering his parables was going to be the most confusing part. Now they had to try to walk around with this man who could make the wind and waves obey him!   I’m not planning any sea voyages anytime soon, but I can take comfort in that fact that Jesus was tired, too. When I’m weary and exhausted, I can rest in the knowledge that he knows exactly how this feels. I can also take a page from his disciples’ book and invite Jesus into my chaos. I may not have the exact words to communicate what I need when life comes crashing down on me, but I can come to him just as I am and yell out, “Help!” His response may surprise me, but I guarantee he won’t sleep through my storm.

Have you ever endorsed something that you didn’t actually know that much about? Maybe it was a product or a restaurant, and then you find out later that it’s not what you thought or how you remembered it. For instance, you remember watching a movie when you were younger—maybe on TV when they would edit inappropriate scenes or replace bad words—then you see the movie is streaming somewhere, and you say, “Oh! This is great! Let’s watch it! You’ll love it!” So you get your preschool aged nieces and your grandmother to the living room, and you start it up only to find out that it is in no way appropriate for this audience and you feel so foolish to have recommended it to everybody. In the end, you didn’t really know the movie, either because you only saw the edited version that the network wanted you to see or because your memory just isn’t all that reliable.   This is what I’ve been considering as I try to live a life dedicated to tell others about Jesus. But before I can really do this, I have to ask myself if I really know who Jesus is. And the best way to do this is to find out who Jesus said He was. While He walked on the earth, He was constantly being asked that very question. He even put it to His disciples: “Who do people say I am?” and they gave a variety of answers. So I don’t think He’ll be offended if we ask Him the same question: Jesus, who are you?   I’m starting my quest to find out who Jesus says He is in John 6. At this point in His ministry, Jesus has fed more than 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. His fame is spreading, so the crowds of people are searching for him. They finally track Him down in verse 25. Jesus tells them, “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.” They want real food—bread they can hold and eat and digest, but then what? They reference the manna God provided for their ancestors in the wilderness, but they still don’t get it. All they can see is their immediate hunger.   Then in verse 35, Jesus lets them in on the biggest secret since God told Adam and Eve not to eat that one particular tree in the garden. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Not only does He have the bread, He is the bread. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died,” Jesus continues. “But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Jesus is preparing their minds for the upcoming Passover meal by proposing something that is nearly unthinkable—He’s offering himself as the perfect, unblemished lamb to be sacrificed.   He tells them, “…the one who feeds on me will live because of me… Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”  The one who feeds on me will live. This sounds gruesome, and it was probably shocking to the people listening, but it makes me ask myself: Where does my nourishment come from? The manna that God gave the Israelites was a temporary solution. They weren’t even allowed to gather extra (with the exception of the day before the Sabbath so they could have a work-free day once a week), otherwise the manna would rot and it would be full of maggots. But there’s no such thing as gathering too much of Jesus! He is the bread of Life that never spoils. He feeds our eternal souls.

The Israelites had escaped Egypt and slavery. The plagues and the flip-flopping Pharaoh. The Passover lamb and the midnight getaway carts. Then God gave them a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and a pillar of fire to give them light at night. Scripture says, “Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.”   The one time when we see that pillar change positions is at the Red Sea. The Israelites weren’t free from the Egyptians yet. Pharaoh and his army had pursued the people, and as the Egyptian chariots and their riders approached, “The angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side.” Just think of that pillar of God’s presence getting into a defensive, protective posture!   If you’ve heard the story (or seen the movie), you know that the Lord drove the sea back to make dry land for the people to cross. They had a wall of water on their right and on their left. But the Egyptians stayed hot on their trail. “During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving.”   The Egyptians were drowned and defeated, and the Israelites continued to seek after the promise of the Promised Land. Because they had to stay on the move, following the cloudy or fiery pillar wherever it led, they had to live in tents—temporary shelters that could be set up and taken down quickly. This process was the inspiration for one of the seven feasts God laid out for them to celebrate in Leviticus 23. “At the end of your harvesting, begin to celebrate this seven-day festival before the Lord. On the first day, build shelters. The purpose of this is to remind the people of Israel, generation after generation, that I rescued you from Egypt, and caused you to live in shelters. I am Jehovah your God.”   Once the temple was eventually built and they were no longer a wandering people, the Feast of Tabernacles continued with a few additions. They still built temporary shelters, and they incorporated a water-drawing ceremony and a light ceremony into the week of festivities. For the light ceremony, Levites would climb ladders to reach the sixteen golden bowls which were perched 75 feet in the air. They would fill the bowls with oil and light the wicks. It was said that all of Jerusalem was illuminated by these lamps, the light shining off of the yellow limestone walls. The choirs of Levites would sing praises, and the people would dance and rejoice. The lamps would burn all night.   More than a thousand years later, Jesus stood in the area where the bowls had been burning. The seven-week feast had ended. Sadly, the shelters had been dismantled and put away, like us taking down Christmas lights in January. Part of the people’s collective sadness—if they knew their history—was that in the stories of the time of Moses, the older generations would have taken down their tents and followed God. They would’ve seen where God’s pillars were heading to go in that direction. They would have evidence of God’s continual presence. But in Jesus’ time, they didn’t have that. Somewhere deep in their souls, they were missing it, but Jesus had something to tell the people who remained. “I am the Light of the world,” He told them. “So if you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, for living light will flood your path.”   Imagine what this statement meant for the people gathered there! If they grew up in a Jewish home, they probably had heard about the stories of the pillar of light each year when they were setting up their temporary shelters. They had been told the importance of light during the festival ceremonies. They had been taught to expect a Messiah.   God had “tabernacled,” or dwelled, with the people in the wilderness for forty years, but they had lost their way long ago. Christ’s appearance was the fulfillment of God’s faithful promises. He continues to be the light in the same way that the pillar of fire brought light. Just like a candle brought into a dark room brings light, Jesus (as the light) has to be brought into a dark world to bring the light that brings life.

One of the most instantly rewarding household chores has got to be vacuuming. In just a few minutes, I can run my vacuum over my living room rug, and it can go from dirty and dusty to clean. When I take off the canister to empty what I’ve collected through the brushes and hoses of my machine, there’s a satisfying cloud of debris dumped into the trash can. But the only way I’ll experience that good feeling of accomplishment is if my vacuum is actually plugged into the outlet in the wall. That efficient machine only works if it’s connected to a power source.   Thousands of years ago, Jesus took his closest friends on a walk just hours before He would be arrested, tried, beaten and eventually crucified. As they made their way to a garden, He took that opportunity to tell them the importance of being connected to the greatest source of power in the universe.   We can’t know for sure, but it’s possible that Jesus and His apostles stopped by, or at least walked past, the temple before crossing the Kidron Valley to get to an olive grove called Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. It’s evident that Jesus loved the temple, so it makes sense for Him to stop by the beautiful building, knowing what was coming in just a few hours. Maybe Jesus pointed out the golden grapevine decorations, like on the columns and above the curtain at the entrance to the Holy Place where there was a gigantic grapevine of pure gold meant to depict Israel.   Whatever prompted Jesus to think of a vine, He told his friends, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15)   Those who have gardens know that there are times when their plants need pruning. They trim branches so they’ll be more fruitful and cut off dead branches that are dried out. Each branch isn’t completely removed, but everything gets pruned to a certain extent. This doesn’t happen every day—there are seasons for cutting and planting. There are times when it’s good to cut things back and plant new things, and there are bad times for this. It depends a lot on the plants, but a master gardener knows exactly when to act.   You may be in a painful pruning season right now, but don’t let that hurt your feelings. God is doing something in you, through you, and around you to make you more fruitful. In fact, we’re told to consider it pure joy when we suffer. But how can we be joyful in that season? The key is in Jesus’ words. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”   Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Until I’m ready to humble myself enough to admit that I’m wholly dependent on Jesus, I’m not going to produce the bounty of fruit that this connection to Jesus could actually yield. Since I’m a branch in this scenario—dead and dried up if separated from the vine—I have to ask: “What is my vine? Where am I expecting to get my strength and wisdom?” It can’t be from my family or my job or hobbies or bank account or outward appearance. I have to stay connected to the One who provides all that I need. “Remain in me,” Jesus said, “as I also remain in you.”