August 7, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Call off thoughts awhile
I went to church yesterday. I got lots of hugs. So many friends asked me how I was doing. They prayed for me, and were very glad to see me.
No one expected to see me there, and I didn’t expect to go. But I continue to have no weakness or need for extra rest or recovery after Friday’s surgical procedure. I should not lift more than 10 or 15 pounds. I should rest when I feel like it. I should resume my normal regimen of medications, both morning and night. I should avoid strenuous activity. But that’s all. And I have to say, my life at age 73 is not very strenuous. A little walking here and there, picking up Jasper now and then, that’s about it. The doctor told him Friday that he weighs 32 pounds.
I have been watching the Gregory Peck masterpiece Moby Dick. Those men lived strenuous lives! They stayed busy constantly, and when they arrived at the whale hunting grounds, they regularly took their lives in their hands. But watching the movie is not “strenuous,” except emotionally.
Taking the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, Jesus said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.
Was feeding five thousand people strenuous for Jesus? I imagine his patience and uncertainty as he waited for God’s direction. His disciples did not understand how they could do anything to feed all these people. I think he did not know either, not at first. But then Jesus acted. “Bring loaves and fishes here to me,” he said, and then invited the crowds to sit down on the grass.
They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.
Jesus learned a thing or two from Moses, who cried out in frustration to the Lord.
Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all these people? Was it I who conceived all of them? Where can I get meat to feed them? All six hundred thousand of them!
Moses jumped to conclusion after conclusion, which left him nowhere to stand.
Please do me the favor of killing me at once, O Lord.
But God did not oblige him. And Jesus, granted that he was in a stronger position than Moses, did not complain to his Father, at least not this time. They worked out a plan, and Jesus was left with lots of leftover food.
Moses and Yahweh also have a plan, which will leave the Israelites with fewer complainers and more patience.
Those who hated the Lord would seek to flatter me, but their fate would endure forever, while Israel I would feed with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.
In one of his as-usual beautiful poems of complicated word-connections, Gerard Manley Hopkins cries out at himself for his own insecurity, shame, and strenuous thinking about just himself, perhaps recognizing his own complaining spirit as he read the story of the Israelites:
My Own Heart
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
I had to read this poem three times, and then again, and at last it began to bear fruit. I hope it goes faster for you. But give it time. Give it time.
(Numbers 11, Psalm 81, Matthew 4, Matthew 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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