Monday, August 4, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Thinkless
I have been watching the Gregory Peck masterpiece Moby Dick. Those whalers lived strenuous lives! They stayed busy constantly, and when they arrived at the whale hunting grounds, they regularly took their lives in their hands. But watching the movie is not “strenuous,” except emotionally.
Taking the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, Jesus said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.
Was feeding five thousand people strenuous for Jesus? I imagine his patience and uncertainty as he waited for God’s direction. His disciples did not understand how they could do anything to feed all these people. I think he did not know either, not at first. But then Jesus acted. “Bring loaves and fishes here to me,” he said, and then invited the crowds to sit down on the grass.
They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.
Jesus learned a thing or two from Moses, who cried out in frustration to the Lord.
Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all these people? Was it I who conceived all of them? Where can I get meat to feed them? All six hundred thousand of them!
Moses jumped to conclusion after conclusion, which left him nowhere to stand.
Please do me the favor of killing me at once, O Lord.
But God did not oblige him. And Jesus, granted that he was in a stronger position than Moses, did not complain to his Father. They worked out a plan, and Jesus was left with lots of leftover food.
Moses and Yahweh also had a plan, which would leave the Israelites with fewer complainers and more patience.
Those who hated the Lord would seek to flatter me, but their fate would endure forever, while Israel I would feed with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.
In one of his as-usual beautiful poems filled with complicated word-connections, Gerard Manley Hopkins cries out at himself for his own insecurity, shame, and strenuous thinking about just himself, perhaps recognizing his own complaining spirit as he read the story of the Israelites:
My Own Heart
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
I read this poem three times, and then again, and at last it began to bear fruit. Try reading it aloud. I hope it goes faster for you. But give it time.
Give it time.
(Numbers 11, Psalm 81, Matthew 4, Matthew 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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