My college life has been anything but spectacular. For eleven years, my drinking kept me away from the classroom, even though I was signed up for classes for many semesters during that period. Student loans were piling up with nothing to show for the stacked up debt. I would hide in my dorm room, depressed, afraid to leave. Alcohol was my master. I had soaked up the maximum amount of resources to sustain my behavior through my parents, and had but one last place to run to - my grandmother.
I knew that my grandma would give me anything I asked for, and every time I showed up the first thing she would ask me was, "Do you need any help with school?" I didn't need any help with school. I needed help buying alcohol. Knowing that she didn't try to figure out my motives, she would give me money anytime I wanted it. I took advantage of her time and time again. None of the money she gave me went where it was supposed to go. Never once did I go to her to develop a relationship or attain some wisdom from her years of experience and knowledge. I went for a handout. I lived my life chasing after perishable food. The thing about it was, she didn't stop giving me what I wanted. She didn't take responsibility for my actions. She did what she believed was right. Maybe she knew that one day I would be going to her gravesite to get on my knees and apologize for the ways I took advantage of her, and to thank her for loving me unconditionally and with no strings attached. Maybe one day she knew that I would work for food that nourished me, food that lasted.
In today's passage for Lent, Jesus is facing the crowd that he had just fed the day before. The crowd has followed him back across the sea of Galilee to the city of Capernaum. He had slipped off after the feast to a mountain to be by himself. The crowd had wanted to crown him king, but he knew that they were sustaining themselves off of the handouts.
When the crowd finally finds him they ask, "Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus responds, "You've come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs - and for free. Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last."
For the longest time, I was convinced that believing in God meant free handouts for life. Free health, wealth, prosperity, jobs, peace, contentment, and spiritual utopia. When life didn't work out the way I wanted it to, I would constantly wonder why God was allowing it to happen that way. I couldn't understand why, since I believed in him and said all the right things and prayed all the right prayers, God wasn't providing the way I wanted him to. What I was lacking was peace, contentment, and lasting life. I wanted God to be a person I could manipulate into giving me what I wanted, and I definitely didn't want to have to work for it.
My experience was that when I tried this method long enough, I hit a spiritual bottom that I call hell on earth. Living in the delusion that God was a heavenly slot machine who gave out spiritual handouts every time I inserted a prayer led me not to heaven on earth, but a state of mental and spiritual torture. Any time I encountered suffering, there was no good to be seen in it. I denied my own responsibility in this life.
What Jesus tells the crowd here is that they are expecting spiritual handouts, and completely missing out on what it looks like to work with God. Instead of working for things like peace, spiritual and emotional freedom, and contentment, they want Band-Aids. I think it's interesting that even though Jesus knew their motives, he still gave them what they wanted - lunch on the hillside.
Do I believe that God blesses us with no strings attached? Absolutely. Do I believe he does it because we have developed a formula for how to get those blessings? Absolutely not. Although the blessings come, we can easily get into the mindset that we are doing something right, and in effect God does something right back. This way of thinking led me to hell on earth. There came a time when my formulas weren't working. It turned out that my relationship with God wasn't formulaic, and that scared me to my core. I had been relying on food that didn't last. The height of this realization came in the form of a prayer that sounded something like, "God, please take away my desire to drink. PLEASE!" The machine would not accept my tokens. I was hopeless.
I'm afraid that there are many folks out there who are trying to insert tokens into the slot machine just like I tried for so many years. But, it takes what it takes. I believe that we eventually come to a place where we see God as a God we can work with. We don't trail behind or lead the way. We walk hand in hand. We see God as a partner, a friend, and not a government or religious program. When we begin to work with God for food that lasts, we begin doing things that we've never done before - like testing the scriptures, questioning what we've been "trained" to believe, and doing absurd things like inviting homeless people into our homes. We go to work not to just get another paycheck, but to investigate ways in which we can contribute to the betterment of the lives around us. We begin following the desires of our hearts, realizing that they were there all along but we had wrote them off as insignificant.
We begin working for food that lasts because the spiritual Band-Aids just aren't working anymore. They keep slipping off and the prayers aren't working. I believe that if we want to experience a life that is truly lasting and peace-filled, we have to show up with a shovel. When we pray, or when we expect God to do something for us, I believe we have some work to do with him.
Today's Action: Examine one thing that we've been praying for lately. Then, ask ourselves, "How am I working with God to see this come into fruition?" Do one thing today to work with God in seeing that prayer come to life.
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