In keeping with our Lifesprings International annual tradition, all of our leaders and members will be celebrating a month of sabbath rest from all regularly scheduled meetings, we call “Breather Month” during August. We invite all of our readers to join us in setting aside intentionally planned times of rest, restoration, and renewal, with God during August. Our reflection for this week will be centered on the theme of encouraging rest from consumerism to sharing or giving away.
Listen:
“Give us today our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)
Reflect:
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, I doubt any of us thinks about this verse as a rest from consumerism. This phrase takes us to the wilderness with the Israelites – traipsing for 45 long days, grouchy, hungry and reminiscing about the good old days of slavery in Egypt. But God was gracious, and patiently forming his people.
God permitted them to gather only enough manna and quail for one day, two days for the Sabbath. They couldn’t do a week’s worth of shopping, they couldn’t store food, they couldn’t hoard food, they couldn’t binge. No one was getting fat. God was forming his people to trust him in giving them their daily bread.
The wilderness is often a biblical metaphor for scarcity and trial. So when Jesus prayed “give us this day our daily bread” he was giving us a wilderness prayer. Jesus knows that when we have more than we need, we get lulled into a comfort-induced coma. In my opinion, comfort is the biggest idol of our age. Comfort makes us slaves to consumerism. Being sacrificially generous with our abundance puts us well outside of our comfort zones, but we miss the opportunity to grow as God’s people.
Jesus puts us in the position of a beggar who depends on the generosity of God. Sure there’s day by day provision for material needs, but not wealth stored up that has no value in God’s kingdom. In other words, he is asking us to live into the very first Beatitude he gave us: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:3)
Prayer of Response:
God of the wilderness, make me a beggar who truly depends on you for everything, so that I may experience true abundance in your kingdom. Amen.
Questions to Ponder:
- How do you succumb to the idol of comfort? What are ways you could fast from that idol and reduce the anxiety that inevitably surrounds that idol.
- Are you being called by God to be sacrificially generous? What might that look like for you?
—Submitted by: Libby Rutherford
Libby Rutherford has been a Lifespringer ever since the first Lifesprings School of Ministry in Grenoble, France. She credits Lifesprings for setting her on a path to discover what God’s call is for her in ministry. Libby is a wife, mother, grandmother and leads 3 flocks – 2 rural churches and an ever-expanding group of misbehaved chickens. She lives in rural northwest Illinois.
Feature photo: Still Life With Loaves of Bread, 1912 by Ilya Mashkov (in public domain)