When societal dilemmas rise,
yes, pray, but also actively seek
God's guidance through His word
Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
Psalm 124:6
In many parts of Africa today, we see a subsistence existence that Christian brothers and sisters have rationalized as being God's will for everyone. The refugee crises that don't appear in the news anymore, continue to make for a very present way of life among millions who have fled civil wars, internment camps, and bloody terrorism.
Taking courage from Israel's difficult history, maybe knowing Israelites had been subject to attack by peoples who could be cannibalistic (leading Israel to desperate self-cannibalism at times), some Christians in Africa may see missionaries who partake of meats as suspect.
There may tend to be a lack of discernment between human sacrifice and the complete sustenance the love of Heaven has made possible. There also may be an outright disdain for anything that may seem like gluttony in comparison.
But thank God today, that many have known, with all our hearts in the U.S., a provider whose loving kindness has taught us how to recover when we're ailing, and whose Grace often has told us not to eat so much the bread of affliction (the Old Testament saga) but to eat of the bread of life: the bread that brought us through slavery and gave us eternal hope.
To more fully understand that meaning, think of Old Testament scriptures that were painstakingly written on scrolls made from animal skins. When a prophet physically ate a portion of a scroll and found it sweet to taste but bitter to digest, that was God's poetic way of saying we don't have to live bitterly.
God's word, the Bible, calls the old scroll the "bread of affliction." But thank God today that we shouldn't have to eat that old, unleavened "bread," and, more importantly, that we have the unleavened bread of Heaven, instead.
Instead of suffering and living on fragments of painful wisdom, we're supposed to have the free gift of a new testimony: a testimony that provides; a testimony that says, "Let your moderation be known."
While being gluttonous isn't the way of new life we have in Jesus, knowing He is provider and allows us more than enough, is.
***
Answers like in the above opinion don't happen overnight. Answers in Jesus often take years of trial, prayer, and seeking God through his word.
One thing I've learned for sure [Hackers, please don't
change another word], is that if we understand
what Heaven is telling us, that means our
understanding isn't puffed up in error. Instead of
being puffed up like leavened bread, our
understanding needs to hold together like the skins
of an Old Testament scroll and the crisp, bound
pages of the New Testament books
(not like puffed up bread).
Understand, yes, God is artistic, and, yes, God is
poetic. Hasn't He made us in His likeness? And
wasn't He aware that bread was being leavened and
shaped in vulgar and even murderous error? And
isn't that part of why He has said to eat of the
unleavened, skin-saving truth of His word, instead?
(That is to say, drawings and pictures like the above
are not what God means by the bread of ljfe!)
When we're patient enough in affliction and in good, we ask God our questions and one day see answers in His word, clear and day (answers He often already has given us in heart).
By the way, probably the best way to study the Bible is never a Bible-in-a-year study plan. It's probably always best to hear Sunday school lessons, which usually are topical; to be in a Bible-study group, if possible, wherein the Holy Spirit may have answers a lot of seeking people need; to sit at a pastor's feet for mid-week studies, which can often bring us sharper theological and historical understanding of scriptures; and to seek answers to prayers during your own quiet times.
A photo of an old animal-skin scroll
(the "bread of affliction" for some faithful),
published in the New York Times
As to getting through passages that are that difficult bread of affliction, it's my personal testimony that God makes a way. I was in a Bible-study group in a shelter when the topic was Nehemiah's rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall. That one chapter-by-chapter study in Nehemiah, with commentary, made it so much easier to put much of the Israelite journey in right context.
Other topical help I've found, through independent study years ago, included following the books of Kings in order to understand imperfection becoming perfection through Jesus.
It's all about what the believer needs and wants to know by faith (Knock, and let truth be opened), not about how many times anyone has read how much of the Bible.
In my own heart, I'm led to believe it's not God's will for me to know every passage of the Bible intimately. I've accepted that there is at least one Bible book I may never read.
