I Got One
It seemed rare that my dad asked a colleague to be on call for his patients so that he could take time off from his private medical practice. Some of those times he would take the family up to the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. In the car, we wound through Salt Creek Canyon then on to the higher, cooler elevations, and the pines. There we would play, relax and fish. Perhaps it was just the kids that played and relaxed. For parents vacations are work.
On one trip, we were with another couple of families. One of the dads was good at finding the best spots for lake fishing. It was on Crescent Lake, in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, that he found us an amazing spot. In the boat, we motored slowly past many other fisherfolk to a quiet inlet with no one around. As I remember it the trout were biting with nearly every cast. We were forever hearing the jubilant, “I got one!” We all caught our limit in short order. To this little kid, it felt magical.
Imagine how amazing it would have felt if those rainbow trout were our only source of food, and we experienced that boon, securing our next meal. You know me, I am always trying to get us to anticipate the readings for the coming Sunday. Our psalm this week is one of the teaching poems of the tradition of Israel. I include verses one and two below though they are not in the Sunday reading. I want you to see it is intended as a didactic piece, like holy storytelling. More extreme in drama than my little childhood fishing tale, this part of Psalm 78 is the musical remembrance of rescue that Yahweh launched to feed the languishing people of God in the wilderness:
1 Hear my teaching, O my people *;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable *
I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.
23 So he commanded the clouds above *
and opened the doors of heaven.
24 He rained down manna upon them to eat *
and gave them grain from heaven.
25 So mortals ate the bread of angels; *
he provided for them food enough.
26 He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens *
and led out the south wind by his might.
27 He rained down flesh upon them like dust *
and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
28 He let it fall in the midst of their camp *
and round about their dwellings.
29 So they ate and were well filled, *
for he gave them what they craved.
Notice in verses twenty-three to twenty-six, how it is the action of God, the Ruler of heaven and earth that provides this food for survival. The One surrounded by angels shares their food in physical form with the mortals, the One who commands the winds of nature makes morning meals happen for the people stumbling through the desert to find the promised land. They would settle for stale crusts, and they get angel food cake. They would take meager rations in their emergency, and they are given daily manna and quail. That food just kept coming day after day until they reached the land promised.
It is important for us to awaken to our own spiritual craving. We need God. Not as an intellectual topic of interest, tangential to our central sense of life, but as the core of life itself. Everything else is a sideline to our relationship with the divine, the true bread. We have a hunger and a thirst that only Christ can relieve. Your worship is not an optional habit, it is your life-sustaining meal at the table. Your relationship with God is not your special interest, it is your life principle and source of existence.
Every time you let yourself be aware of the presence of God it is the fulfillment of your longing, and the promise of your next taste of God’s life offered to you. So feast and be satisfied, even now, at this moment. Eat and be filled. Receive the One you crave within.