daily java

Daily Java:

We have heard about proud Moab—
  about its pride and arrogance and rage.
  But all that boasting has disappeared.
The entire land of Moab weeps.
  Yes, everyone in Moab mourns
for the cakes of raisins from Kir-hareseth.
  They are all gone now.
The farms of Heshbon are abandoned;
  the vineyards at Sibmah are deserted.
The rulers of the nations have broken down Moab—
  that beautiful grapevine. (Isaiah 16:6-8)

In my daily Bible reading I am reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is delivering God’s condemnation to several countries round about Israel.

It can get rather depressing and I am always glad when I get through with this section. I don’t really care for it. For one thing, I have no emotional investment in all these countries and, quite frankly, do not care about them.

However, one thing struck me today. The passage above where the people missed their raisin cakes. What a strange thing to miss. Your whole country lies in ruins and people miss the raisin cakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how caught up in food memories we are.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of her chocolate gravy. She made chocolate gravy like I have never had before or since. It was a special Saturday morning breakfast served over biscuits and was great.

My wife said that when she thinks of me and things I make, she thinks of either steak or lasagna. With her I think of stroganoff. Our daughter will probably think of green enchiladas, what we call sour cream enchiladas. Ella’s mother, she said, was roast, rice and gravy., her favorite aunt soup, my mother roast and french fries.

We all have memory keys of things that are gone. The Moabites were of raisin cakes. In the good old days, they say around eating raisin cakes. Now that the vineyards are gone, they cannot and they miss them.

I don’t really know what a raisin cake is exactly – a bunch of raisins mashed together, or a cake made with a lot of raisins – but when they thought of home that was it. And it was gone irretrievably.

When things are gone, not only the bad, but also the good is gone. The good old days were really only a few memories you have stored up that exclude the bad memories. Life in Moab was not all sitting around snacking on raisin cakes. Every meal of my mother’s was not roast and the chocolate gravy was a sometime thing.

But it is funny that you associate those not-to-be-repeated foods with different people and places.

John Donne said, “you cannot go home.” You can’t go back and have those foods in those situations. It is impossible. But how large they loom in your mind and how much you miss the people who gave them to you.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then the Lord said to Elijah, “Go and live in the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. I have instructed a widow there to feed you.” So he went to Zarephath. As he arrived at the gates of the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks, and he asked her, “Would you please bring me a little water in a cup?” As she was going to get it, he called to her, “Bring me a bite of bread, too.” But she said, “I swear by the Lord your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house. And I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil in the bottom of the jug. I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal, and then my son and I will die.” But Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid! Go ahead and do just what you’ve said, but make a little bread for me first. Then use what’s left to prepare a meal for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: There will always be flour and olive oil left in your containers until the time when the Lord sends rain and the crops grow again!” So she did as Elijah said, and she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days. There was always enough flour and olive oil left in the containers, just as the Lord had promised through Elijah. (1 Kings 17:9-16)

You have ten dollars left for a while to feed your family. The preacher comes up and says, give me five. You want to honor the man of God and you respect him and all. But what do you do?

The famine was bad and there no food. The widow in this narrative had just enough flour and oil left to feed herself and her son one more time and then they would die. The prophet came up and asked, bring me something to eat. She told him her predicament, that two small loves of bread stood between her and starvation and they were about to eat them.

Do it anyway, he said. and use what is left to make you and your son a meal. But if you do this, you will never again run out of meal or oil. And she did.

It took a fair amount of faith for her to give him what he asked for, especially since it was all she had. But she did. And she was blessed for it.

We may not have much, but God said that he would bless us in what we had and in what we gave. Sometimes we may not be able to give money, but there is something we can give. She had a little food and she gave it. And God blessed her. She had flour and oil forever.

As long as we give, God gives to us.

Ella and I are extremely short on money. We cannot give any. There is absolutely no extra. But we have time and we have talents. And one other thing we have is the desire and the ability to feed people.

We are always having people over to our home. It has been that way for a long time. And the great thing about it is we have never wanted for food. We have a full freezer of stuff right now. As long as we share it, we have more.

This is not because we are so great, but it is because we want to give hospitality to others. We believe in it and have for a long time.

Several years back, I had invited someone over for supper. We were in a monetary fix at the time then too. Ella was obviously unhappy. I finally asked her what was wrong. She replied, “We have no money and you are giving our food away!” I opened the freezer door and it was jam packed with food. I opened the other freezer door on the other refrigerator and it too was full. It had meat, cheese, bread, vegetables – everything you can imagine – in abundance.

She realized the unique and really kind of weird blessing we had from God. As long as we do it, we have plenty. As long as we give it away, we have plenty.

And not only that, we bring people in the church together in a small group setting. I learn more about others and they learn about us. we talk about God and the things of grace and we have a good time.

It makes a difference. In many ways, we – Ella and I – are the only real hospitality outlet of our church. Outside of us, there is not a lot of getting together. I want to change that.

But it starts with me and with my generosity with what I have. When I am generous with others, God multiplies it to me.

Praise his name.

daily java

Daily Java:

But after he had taken the census, David’s conscience began to bother him. And he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly by taking this census. Please forgive my guilt, Lord, for doing this foolish thing.” (2 Samuel 24:10)

God punished David for counting all of his people so he could be proud of the great country of which he was king. The Lord had told him to just be king and let him (God) worry about the people.

A few years ago, I decided to count all of the meat I had in my freezer and put a list on the door of everything I had. I did so and realized that, even though I only had a little bit of money, I had a lot of meat.

Back in the 1990’s, we began to feed people. And we found that the more people we fed, the more food we had. I usually (unless it is on super sale) only buy marked down meat. So we had a lot of meat because we fed a lot of people. We were generous, so God was generous to us.

And we fed everybody. We would have at time upwards of 35 people eating with us. I mastered the art of “big, cheap food,” or food with high macaroni or rice content. Spaghetti, chili mac, jambalaya – that sort of thing.

We had decided early on that, even though we may qualify for food stamps, we would not take them. I felt they were a slap in God’s face. It was like saying that he didn’t give me enough so we had to go to the government to get more.

And God blessed us.

Then I took a “census” of all our frozen meat. And we almost ran out. We got down to a pound of hamburger and I had repented what I had done. Then the Lord started giving us meat again.

I never did it again. And we have a freezer that has quite a bit of meat in it. Considering the fact that we have less money now than ever that is a move of God.

And we still feed people. We have found ourselves to be the hospitality arm of the church we attend. We are the only ones in the whole church that has people over for dinner. And we have had a major part of the church over.

Quite frankly, it is hardly ever reciprocated, but that doesn’t really matter. We do it because it is our ministry, not to get people to invite us over.

But we rely on his grace and on his plenitude. He gives and we give. We have no real money to give in the contribution plate, but we give of food and we give of time.

And he blesses us. I know our food supply is not miraculous, but I do know it comes from the Father above.

daily java

Daily Java:

We have heard about proud Moab—
      about its pride and arrogance and rage.
      But all that boasting has disappeared.
The entire land of Moab weeps.
      Yes, everyone in Moab mourns
for the cakes of raisins from Kir-hareseth.
      They are all gone now.
The farms of Heshbon are abandoned;
      the vineyards at Sibmah are deserted.
The rulers of the nations have broken down Moab—
      that beautiful grapevine. (Isaiah 16:6-8)

In my daily Bible reading I am reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is delivering God’s condemnation to several countries round about Israel.

It can get rather depressing and I am always glad when I get through with this section. I don’t really care for it. For one thing, I have no emotional investment in all these countries and, quite frankly, do not care about them.

However, one thing struck me today. The passage above where the people missed their raisin cakes. What a strange thing to miss. Your whole country lies in ruins and people miss the raisin cakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how caught up in food memories we are.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of her chocolate gravy. She made chocolate gravy like I have never had before or since. It was a special Saturday morning breakfast served over biscuits and was great.

My wife said that when she thinks of me and things I make, she thinks of either steak or lasagna. With her I think of stroganoff. Our daughter will probably think of green enchiladas, what we call sour cream enchiladas. Ella’s mother, she said, was roast, rice and gravy., her favorite aunt soup, my mother roast and french fries.

We all have memory keys of things that are gone. The Moabites were of raisin cakes. In the good old days, they say around eating raisin cakes. Now that the vineyards are gone, they cannot and they miss them.

I don’t really know what a raisin cake is exactly – a bunch of raisins mashed together, or a cake made with a lot of raisins – but when they thought of home that was it. And it was gone irretrievably.

When things are gone, not only the bad, but also the good is gone. The good old days were really only a few memories you have stored up that exclude the bad memories. Life in Moab was not all sitting around snacking on raisin cakes. Every meal of my mother’s was not roast and the chocolate gravy was a sometime thing.

But it is funny that you associate those not-to-be-repeated foods with different people and places.

John Donne said, “you cannot go home.” You can’t go back and have those foods in those situations. It is impossible. But how large they loom in your mind and how much you miss the people who gave them to you.

stealing to buy food for your children

An article from a website of strange things that I read every day the headline reads: Woman steals credit card, goes down the street to buy burgers.

The blurb reads: The 29-year-old Chicago woman allegedly used a stolen debit card to purchase hamburgers for herself and two children less than 50 yards from where the card was reportedly stolen. It's not much of a story, but I thought the mug shot might add something to it. (Chicago Tribune Local)

Was she so desperate for food for herself and her two children that she could go 50 yards without buying something to eat?

This article hurts me on some strong basic level. The desperation of this young woman, the need to buy food for her children and the inability to do so.

If she had bought clothes or gas or anything else, it would not have struck me.

There have been a couple of times in my life that I felt desperate. I never stole to do what I needed, but I know how she feels.

This article will haunt me for a while. I wish I cold have helped.