Today in the One Year Bible, we read from Luke 4:1-30. In this passage, Jesus goes without food for 40 days. Quite a fast! And when tempted to eat, He tells the tempter, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." This used to puzzle me a little. I mean, I understood that Jesus was saying, "Doing what God wants is more important than eating." But the WAY He said it made me scratch my head. Not by bread ALONE, but by EVERY word God says. It almost sounded like He was saying that bread was one of the words that God said.
When I was meditating on this one day, I realized that it's true. God spoke and everything came into being. Food, along with all other bodily pleasures (sleep, sex, exercise, games, beauty, etc.), are "words" that God has spoken into our lives. And we, Jesus says, are not to live only to fulfill our bodily pleasures (on bread alone) but we are to live our lives more deeply and profoundly, experiencing ALL of the words that God speaks into our lives.
This is especially timely advice right now, during Lent. God created chocolate. He created music. He created all of the good things that we give up during Lent. And He intended them for our pleasure. But we give them up during Lent in order to focus on those OTHER words that He speaks into our lives... the ones that are easy to miss when we're too focused on the bodily pleasures.
God, help us to live by all of Your words, not just the easy ones.
1 comment:
That was actually really insightful. Like how I gave up social media for Lent. Even deleted profiles on dating websites and stuff. In a way I was hoping that by ignoring all of that for a while I could focus more on what God was actually telling me maybe? So that’s similar to what you’re saying here. Also, food is something we need to physically survive and it sustains us. But in a way I think when Jesus said what he said to the tempter, he was maybe trying to make the point that, just like food for physical survival, we need what God tells us for our spiritual survival. This was an awesome blog post. I learn a lot from you. 😊
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