Friday 13 March 2009

Once again, for the next week or so I will be using selections from "The Strength of Love" in which M.L. King focuses on this parable: "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him."

The traveler asks for three loaves of bread. He wants the bread of faith. In a generation of so many colossal disappointments, men have lost faith in God, faith in man, and faith in the future. many feel as did William Wilberforce, who in 1801 said, "I dare not marry - the future is so unsettled," or as did William Pitt, who in 1806 said, "There is scarcely anything round us but ruin and despair." In the midst of staggering disillusionment, many cry for the bread of faith.

The bread of faith is meant to sustain us in and through all the times of our lives. This loaf of bread is often difficult to find. There are so many voices and images and hard evidence that shows that times are not good...that the future is in question. It is very easy to listen to these voices - they are ubiquitous. In such times as King notes and the times that are at hand, we all need this bread of faith to nourish us so that we will listen to the one voice that promises us life no matter what the evidence of the day is providing. This bread of faith is meant to be the power behind a life of faith. It is not magic. It is the actual life that wakes up in the middle of the way things are and we step forward as though God's claim on us is just as grand and powerful today as in any day.

Connection: This is not always easy to do. Sometimes we forget that the bread of faith is not a statement we try to say is true. Rather it is a reality we can chew on and be made aware of who is the one who provide this bread for our life.

In days when we wonder about where the world is going and the guns of war can be heard alongside the economic troubles bubbling around us, we turn to you, O God. It is in you alone that we are lifted up and held and encouraged and reminded of the power of life that comes from you in order to meet the day as your beloved - always. Amen.