Tuesday, May 6, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Life lives us
My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.
So they said to Jesus,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
Yesterday was Children’s Day in Japan, and we celebrated in Austin with a dinner prepared by Aki’s parents, Ken and Machiko. We had Japanese salad, dumplings and even Japanese meatloaf. For dessert we ate daifukumochi (which means “great luck”), a special New Year’s Day treat in Tokyo made from red bean paste in rice cakes. These were wrapped in oak leaves, the traditional way they are served in Japan. Ken and Machiko found these in an import grocery, and they told us they had not eaten this dessert since they came to the US 45 years ago. It felt almost like a miracle to them, and they were very happy as we ate our meal together.
As we marveled at the joy of living in our global culture, I thought of this poem:
Sometimes I have to squint because
the loving goodness of this world is too immense.
Sometimes I need to close my eyes and rest, and listen, and be.
When we notice that life lives us,
we can relax, and our gratitude colors everything.
Immersed in love, to be loved, to offer love,
to ache because of love, and to rejoice.
To live in love is to rejoice. – Clarence Heller
Don Follis recently wrote about memory, and how what we remember is in a way, who we are. Our in-laws felt more whole as we sat together, as they remembered meals on New Year’s Day, almost fifty years ago. I began to think of my mother’s Christmas Eve oyster stew, and of the oyster stew my mother ate with her parents when she was growing up a hundred years ago. And I thought of Thanksgiving turkey at my sister’s house, with the whole family gathered around a table full of food. And of so many communion meals, just bites of bread and a bit of wine, when there was Jesus in the midst of us.
When he wanted to encourage the new Christians in his scattered churches, Paul often wrote about what he remembered. As he grew older, I wonder if he began to dream his memories, as I sometimes do. In a dream you can’t just push the facts aside, they rush in where angels fear to tread. My dreams sometimes become nightmares, as Paul’s must have also when he remembered the early days when he persecuted those he later came to love.
Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened
and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
But they cried out in a loud voice,
covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.
They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him.
The witnesses laid down their cloaks
at the feet of a young man named Saul.Â
I often realize my imagination is a powerful gift God gave us and renews in us so we can communicate with him. When we imagine what he is saying to us, his words come more easily and clearly.
God is always speaking, and we can always listen, using our imagination and our memory, watching “life live us” and knowing how much we’re loved.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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