Monday Morning Manna
Monday, June 21
Monday Morning Manna
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. John 4:34
Have you ever been empowered by a deadline, working so hard throughout the day to the point where you simply forgot to eat? If you haven’t, imagine yourself on a high-speed roller coaster on the verge of dropping several hundred feet. I can guarantee you’re not thinking about food. This is what’s happening in John 4. Jesus and His disciples were empowered by God.
They were travelling from Judea, on their way to Galilee, and had to go through Samaria. Jesus and His disciples were tired. They’d been working hard with crowds of people. Jesus had been teaching them, and the disciples had been baptizing many of them. They came to Jacob’s well at Sychar, and Jesus sat down, tired and hungry. His disciples were tired and hungry too, and they wanted to get some food to sustain them for the rest of the journey, so they went into the town, leaving Jesus at the well.
When the disciples returned an encounter happened. A life was saved and restored back to a rightful relationship with God. This, the work of God, filled Jesus within. Jesus had just offered living water to a Samaritan woman who came to draw water from a well. When the woman discovered that Jesus was the Messiah, she got so excited that she left her water pot to tell others about Jesus. We all have the need to eat and drink, but we have a deeper need in our souls for reality.
When we discover that Jesus is the reality who satisfies the thirst and hunger in our souls, it’s easy to forget about our physical needs and a lot of other things. The deep, abiding joy that Jesus gives makes a lot of other things look very small and trivial.
There’s an unimaginable joy and inner satisfaction that comes from walking with God. We are not built to run on the spiritual junk food that’s offered to us every day. Food which we munch on during the busyness of life. It’s a cheap substitute for living in an ongoing conversation with a holy, living God. I know I’m sometimes busy, tired, and hungry, but I don’t often stop to ask what the Father wants for me in the midst of it all. I usually rush off, like the disciples, and fix my own needs (similar to eating a non-nutrient filled meal). When the disciples came back, they tried to get Jesus to eat, but He didn’t want anything, because His Father had ‘fed’ Him.
This week, may you find yourself filled with the manna from heaven. Of course, we need to eat food regularly, but what really sustains our life? How much do we miss by not sitting by the ‘well’ long enough for the Father to speak to us and touch others through us?
Prayer for today: Father, help us to listen to Your heart in the midst of the busyness and tiredness of our daily lives, and lift us out of our narrow vision, which only focuses on self – the here and the now, to see the bigger picture You want us to see. Amen.