Lately I’ve been thinking about emergency preparedness and stocking up on basic nutrition to see us through a transition until we can shift our activities to get enough food crop in the ground to meet our needs as an island community without relying on imports.
In thinking this I’ve been pondering on the creative ability of Our Lord Jesus (Triune God, Father Son and Holy Spirit) and the prosperity of His eternal kingdom versus the scarcity of this world and this finite polluted planet.
The story of Elijah and the ravens and the (pagan) widow’s oil keeps coming to mind. Coincidentally, the other day it was in my in box from my daily subscription to the Canadian Bible Society email feed.(1 Kings 17) (There are actually no coincidences in the Kingdom of God. Someone whose name I have forgotten has said ‘coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.’)
I do not want to be like the preppers who horde food, refuse to share with outsiders, and who train for the day they will shoot looters and trespassers during the zombie apocalypse.
I do not want to be like the foolish man who gathered everything into barns and bragged he would be able to live the easy life for years to come.(Luke 12:8 and following)
When Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fish they started with a teenager’s lunch of two fish and five buns. (I believe I owe the phrase ‘teenager’s lunch’ to my preaching professor Stephen Farris.)
When Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding feast that had run dry, they started by filling giant jars of water, game to see what Jesus would do as they followed his instructions to prepare.
If trusting in Jesus, and not in our hording, we lay aside sufficient nutrition for our family with ability to share with our friends we can be like Joseph in the 7 good years before the famine, or like the boy who volunteered his lunch for the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6), or the wedding planner who had the servants fill the water jars for ritual purification (John 2), curious to see what this preparation had to do with a resupply of wine.
We creatures, no matter how resourceful and clever, are limited by scarcity. But we must not let that capture our imagination in such a way as we become inhospitable or deadly to those in need.
I do not want to be like the ant denying the improvident, lazy grasshopper in Aesop’s fable. Improvident people who have not had the vision and the will or the ability to prepare for emergency are human beings made in the image of God. Additionally no matter how vigorous and virtuous I may become in preparation, I will always be caught short in something because I am a finite creature dependent upon our Creator and on my neighbours.
Jesus is real. I can’t prove it. But we who have responded to his grace through faith KNOW it profoundly. He is the Creator of Heaven and earth and although He usually uses natural processes that we can measure with scientific methodology, He is able to overide them and overcome scarcity in surprising ways.
Like having ritually unclean birds (ravens, carrion eaters) bring his prophet good, healthy kosher meat in the time of famine.
Or even more ‘unlikely’ still, multiplying the oil and flour of a hospitable but pagan (and therefore an unclean ‘infidel’) widow who was willing to share the last meal she had for her son and herself with the foreign prophet of a God she did not know beyond the reports of the religion of her neighbours, rivals of her own civilization.
When Jesus commended her faith in his sermon at his home-town synagogue the congregation got so angry they were ready to throw Him over a cliff. But it was not HIs time so the Holy Spirit preserved Him until the appointed hour of His death. (Which three days later was followed by the ‘unlikely’ appointed hour of His resurrection. Interestingly when the well fed boy died, and the widow wondered, God brought the boy back from the dead. Providence AND resurrection for pagans coming to faith in the LORD during a time of famine. It is possible. it has happened before. Trust in the Lord and not even death can destroy us.))
Our Lord will provide for His people and our unbelieving neighbours as we seek His Kingdom (His person, His rule (administration), His people (His body, HIs bride, His temple of living stones, His branches), and His realm (His jurisdiction, that being the whole of creation seen and unseen) first above all.
Usually he does that through things like crops and stored rations. But He is not limited the way we are and we must always keep our imagination open for his ‘unlikely’ provision through apparently ‘impossible’ means as we obey him and resist the urge to be stingy and to kill those who threaten our limited stocks.
Leave a Reply