Devotion.al

Feed Your Soul

  • Laying The Bread Down

    Psalm 145:10–18; 2 Kings 4:42–44; Ephesians 3:14–21; John 6:1–21

    It is tempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can look at society and even many churches (in particular, their leaders), and just up. There is such a struggle against the and against , that it can be overwhelming.

    At the time of Elisha, Israel had a God-worshipping heritage, but it was set up for failure at the beginning with golden calves being placed as the place of worship. Israel had been the stronghold of Baal and Asherah. God worship had struggled to be strong in the face of royal opposition. It could have been given up. The light doesn’t die.

    An unnamed man brings his offering to the prophets of God. There is no place of God to worship in Israel, so the man brought it to the prophets. While it was not “at the Temple” (a no-go place for the Israelites), it was still a matter of the . The man couldn’t bring it to the temple, so he brought it to the next best place.

    Then, there wasn’t enough to feed them. That should cause us to conclude that they were not doing particularly well. If there was such great concern that there wasn’t enough bread, bread was probably an issue, showing that was an issue.

    Their situation was much like the people who were following . There was not nearly enough food to feed all those people. While we might question Andrew’s , there does seem to be something behind that. Andrew apparently knew Jesus well enough to go search the crowd for food. Then, bringing what was found, he concluded that there wasn’t enough for the crowd.

    In both the stories of Elisha and Jesus, logically there wasn’t enough food. God still did something. God did so much that there were leftovers.

    ※Reflection※

    • What does the bread-making miracle of Elisha have to do with Jesus’? Does it matter about Elisha’s when it comes to Jesus’?
    • What situations can you think of that are similar to the man who doesn’t bring his offering to the “right” place, but to the “best” place for him? Do you think God honors that?

    ※Prayer※

    Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his at work within us; glory to him in the and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and always. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20, CEB)

  • How to Come Back

    How to Come Back

    1 Corinthians 11:17–33 It’s almost over it seems. The time of being masked and constrained nears its end. On the other hand, already another strain of COVID is showing up, but the reality is that we, as an entire world, are at our limits. It seems great that we’re almost there, except that we really…

  • Future Tensely

    Future Tensely

    Psalm 126; Isaiah 40:1-11; Romans 8:22-25 Have you realized that Advent is weird? I love Advent, don’t get me wrong. However, the world has done a successful job of retraining us on what Advent is all about. Partially, I think, this is because of the image of an unthreatening baby Jesus with lambs, other baby…

  • Seeing Christ In The Lives of Others

    Romans 12:16–21 As part of our college ministry many years ago, we asked our college students to come up with their mission statement. It was coached in a business/organization language; it should have been better phrased as a Rule of Life. Mine was: Seeing Christ in the Lives of Others. Yes, the title was my…

  • A Movement: Of Priest and Temple

    A Movement: Of Priest and Temple

    …if we…focus too much on the outside, the temple comes crumbling down, for the internal structure cannot hold up the facade shown to the world, and we then dishonor God by our fallen temple.