JR. Forasteros - July 15, 2012
Joshua - Where's the Manna?
While Israel wandered in the wilderness between the slavery of Egypt and the freedom of the Promised Land, God provided manna for them to eat every day. But after they arrived in the Promised Land, the manna stopped. Did this mean God abandoned them? No. It meant that they now had to start feeding themselves, using the bounty of the Land God had given them. This is a model for our Christian faith: when we first start out, as spiritual infants, God\\\'s presence is easy to sense, and everything seems easy. But God won\\\'t let us remain infants; we must grow up, learn to feed our own souls.
From Series: "Road Trip"
This Summer, we take a road trip through the Old Testament. Along the way, we stop in with some of the more famous encounters and observe how their brief encounters changed their lives.
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In the years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, I went to the city to do relief work several times. It was during those trips I learned that what victims of disasters want most isn’t necessarily the relief work. Every trip went more-or-less the same:
A big group of us would show up and get to work. Maybe we were gutting a home so it could be cleansed of mold and rebuilt. Maybe we were cleaning up vacant lots to beautify a city block for the other residents. Mostly we were gutting homes – tearing out sheetrock and ripping up flooring. It was brutal, exhausting work, particularly in the New Orleans summers.
The residents would always be nearby, helping if they could or in their FEMA trailers making lemonade for us workers.
And inevitably, over the three or four days we were there, each of us would end up just sitting and talking with that resident. Despite the fact that we were on a schedule. Even though we were working hard to get their home finished.
What they needed most wasn’t a new home (though, obviously, that was important).
What they needed most wasn’t our strong backs and hard work. What they needed most, every time, was human interaction. They needed to tell their story, to be seen and heard, to know they’re not alone in their grief.
Again and again, what gave them hope was not the pounding hammers and loaded wheelbarrows, but a person sitting with them, being present with them.
What does it means to be WITH someone in times of grief? The final movement of Lament is hope, an anticipation that grief is not the final word.
