Old Testament: Jeremiah 16:10-21
Psalm 89:1-18 * 89:19-52
Epistle: Romans 7:1-12
Gospel: John 6:1-15
The loaves and fishes story has always been a favorite of mine, going back to my Baptist Sunday School days where we cut out fish and loaves from construction paper and filled up baskets, also made of construction paper.
Several years ago, I was part of the team serving lunch in Community Kitchens on the Memorial Day holiday. We’d planned on the usual small crowd, and had food prepared for sixty. Instead, we discovered a line of over a hundred, which continued to grow, around the block. We’d run out of food. We pooled our pocket money, got some sandwiches, tried to stretch those into enough meals, but the line continued to grow. We began opening random cans in the pantry, and no two plates looked alike. Just when we were about to give up hope, we discovered bags of chicken nuggets in the freezer, and we loaded up a lot of sheet pans and kept the oven going until everyone was fed. When the floors were mopped and we were in the quiet, stillness of the kitchen, we looked a small bowl of chicken nuggets. We’d fed the multitudes and had some leftover. We were all aware of the abundance on the table and the grace of that moment.
The whole concept of abundance has been on my mind lately. I’ve gone wide-open cleaning out closets, clearing out the basement, and moving myself into a more simple way of life. It’s stuff that seems to have been there forever. I forgot what all was there. I took it for granted. There was sometimes an odd sense of security in this mess (which, arguably, could come close to being called a “hoard.”). I got to thinking about my own life, and how God has blessed me with abundance; yet I sometimes lost sight of it, and often took it all for granted.
Lent has a way of helping with that. On Ash Wednesday, I reflect, and begin my Lenten journey. I get smudged with ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Just like I am undertaking a massive house-cleaning of my mid-century brick rancher, Lent is a time for spiritual house-cleaning as well. I sweep. I vacuum. I mop. I come face to face with the abundance in my life, and carefully examine it, and examine myself. And out of this abundance, I offer God my dust. My messy, sacred, holy dust.
“O God, grant us a sense of your timing. In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold, teach us the lessons of beginnings; that such waitings and endings may be the starting place, a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born something right and just and different, a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love in the fullness of your time.” Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace
Gerald Wildes
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