Lent Book: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/an-ocean-of-grace
My jottings:
(Comments welcome)
Ocean of Grace (9): THURSDAY – Eat and
Be Satisfied (p36ff)
Jesus is the Bread of Life (John 6:35). And he
is daily bread – the essential staple - for our souls. He feeds and sustains us
for our earthly pilgrimage as he calls us to walk his way. He is the Manna, the
bread of God which has come down from heaven. The Son is the Father’s gracious
provision for us.
Let us savour Christ and pray for a greater
appetite for him.
We are to hunger and thirst for Jesus. And to
be satisfied in him. Reflect on how we may both be full and long for more.
We feed on Jesus in our hearts by faith with
thanksgiving (as the Communion service says).
Now, in the Lord’s Supper Jesus gives us himself
and he gives us bread and wine, a complete meal and a festive one. He sets a
table in the midst of our enemies (cf. Psalm 23). He welcomes us as part of his
family who belong at his Table. (Think how often Jesus is eating and drinking
in the gospels or teaching about meals and parties). We are companions of Jesus
– literally, we eat bread with him.
But this feast is a foretaste, a down payment,
of the greater feast to come when we will share in the Wedding Supper of the
Lamb (Revelation 19). We will eat and drink with Christ in his kingdom (Mark
14:25; Luke 22:30), in our heavenly home. When the battle is finally over, the
victory banquet. The Lord’s Supper of course looks back to the cross (we eat
and drink in remembrance of Christ) but it also looks forward as we proclaim
the Lord’s death until he comes again (1 Corinthians 11:26).
We are incessantly hungry creatures. And we
tend to be dissatisfied and restless. In his Confessions, Augustine also
famously said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.
Let us pray that we would know that rest more and more, perhaps in the midst of
busyness and grief and dangers. Let us pray that our work would issue from and
result in rest. And that we would know this rest fully and finally when we
enter into our Eternal Rest.
Hymn: Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5NOVcefEYU
Words: https://hymnary.org/text/guide_me_o_thou_great_jehovah
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