Uganda

Give Us Our Daily Bread

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

He will give the rain for your land in its season, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil, and you will eat and be satisfied. Deuteronomy 11:14-15, edited.

The line from the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” is a line that most Americans can hardly relate to. We may guess that “bread” was representational of food in general, so the text is talking about the provision we need for life each day. But we are so amply supplied that we can’t imagine praying that prayer.

Rev. Stephen Kaziimba, who came to our area from Uganda has been teaching us otherwise about how much of the world hears these words. After he had been in Michigan for a year, he was asked what he would remember longest from being here. His reply was, “All my life, I will never forget having this one year when I did not need to worry about food.”

I was dumbfounded by that statement, that a good friend could come from a place where such basic necessities were unmet. He pointed out that in America we have food but no appetite, but where he comes from, people have appetite but no food. In his country, “Give us our daily bread” is a heartfelt prayer, expressing the continual worry of most people.

Now, when I read the Scriptures, I see that his perspective is more close to that of the Bible than mine is. One of God’s promises that the Israelites would have heard as a great blessing was that they “will eat and be satisfied.” To have enough to be full was a blessing from the Lord, and to be fat was a sign of beauty and bounty. As one who is a little overweight, it shows me both that God has abundantly blessed me, and that I’m not doing enough to share the blessings with others in need.

Sometimes the best way to pray a prayer is to live the prayer. Now, whenever I hear the words “Give us our daily bread” it will remind me to to not overbuy food when I go shopping, to not order huge portions in restaurants, and to eat my leftovers before they go bad. And most of all, it will remind me to be thankful for the abundant food we have and to be mindful of the needs of others.

Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash

Prepare the Way for the Lord

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. (Isaiah 40:3)

 

The scriptures say that John was the voice crying out, “In the wilderness, prepare the way for the LORD.” What does that mean?

One ancient idea behind this line is that before a great king could visit a region, a messenger would be sent ahead to announce that the way must be prepared. After the winter rains, roads may be potholed or obstructed by debris. Before a royal caravan traveled on them, they needed to be repaired. The people of the region would also prepare themselves and their villages for their royal visitors too.

When I visited Uganda years ago, they preserved a cultural memory of “preparing the way.” As we approached the church group that was expecting us, they went out and lined the road, waving branches and singing as we arrived.

John the Baptist

You might wonder how this prophecy was fulfilled by John the Baptist. Jesus said that John was the “Elijah” who was to come. He was speaking of the prophecy in Malachi 4:5-6 that says,

See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.

John was calling the people to purify themselves by repentance. The Jews already had the ceremony of ritual bathing that purified ceremonial uncleanness. But John had a different idea — that a person can become unclean from sin, not just ritual impurity. He was calling Jews to not lean on the fact that they were “sons of Abraham,” but to repent of their sins, personally commit themselves to the covenant, and enthrone God over their lives, and to enter God’s “Kingdom.”

Because of John’s work, when Jesus arrived, people were prepared for his ministry of the “kingdom of God,” in which he also called them to enter under God’s reign. Jesus explained that it also was his own kingdom, because he was the royal King, the Messiah that God sent.

FieldJesus talked about seed falling on good soils or bad soils, on rocks or thorns, as a picture of the hearts of people and how they receive God’s word. John had been preparing the way by plowing the “rough ground” and making “rugged places a plain,” making people ready to repent, turn their lives around, and accept the atonement of Jesus for their sins.

Photo: Muffet

The Golden Table Leg

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Burying TreasureDo not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

(This story was adapted from a rabbinic parable.)

Once upon a time there was an old pastor who had served the Lord faithfully all of his life. He had an anointed ministry, and people found his prayers were powerful and effective. When he prayed for the sick, they often were healed. But with all of that, he was extremely poor, and he and his wife struggled daily to get by on almost nothing.

One day when they were out walking, after they had seen yet another person healed, his wife said to him, “God certainly must have prepared a rich reward for all of your years of work when you get to heaven, and he always seems to listens to your prayers. Why don’t you ask the Lord to give us just a tiny bit of your heavenly reward here on earth so that we don’t have to live in such terrible poverty?” The pastor thought this was a good idea, so right there the two of them asked the Lord to let them have a little something from what God prepared for them early, while they were still alive.

Immediately the sky opened above them, and a table leg made out of gold fell to earth right in front of them. They rejoiced and thought of all the things they could buy with this gift from God. The next morning, the pastor looked very troubled and his wife asked him what was wrong. The pastor said, “Last night I had a dream that we were sitting at a great banquet in heaven, and every family had its own table to sit around. But ours was missing a leg so that it tilted and wobbled terribly!” His wife sat down and considered this a long time. She finally said, “In that case, we must go quickly and ask the Lord to take back the gift he gave us yesterday.”

They prayed, and immediately the heavens opened, and the table leg rose back up into heaven. And this was the greatest answer to prayer of all.*

(I saw the point of this parable after I became friends with some pastors in Uganda who live in great poverty but have wonderful ministries. Where I live, there are many who do similar good work, but have a comfortable, prosperous life here in America. After seeing all the trials that my poorer friends go through, I think, personally, that the Lord will reward them for all the things they lived without in order to serve him.)

*Adapted from “The Two Legged Table” from the book Theology in Rabbinic Stories by Chiam Pearl, Hendrickson, 1997

Photo: Yelkrokoyade