His legs, not quite able to reach the ground swung freely as we sat waiting in the doctors office.
“Mommy?”
“Yes dearling?”
“Why are we at the doctors?”
“Because Mommy’s eye is sick.”
It was a sunny Monday morning and I was sitting in my doctors waiting room internally begging for my name to be called. My husband has worked the midnight shift for the better part of six years, and so I am used to going it alone during doctors visits and general errand running. But today, today of all days, I needed three extra pairs of hands. As it was I was trying very hard to keep track of a toddler who had just recently decided he wanted nothing to do with sitting still and a six year old who was full of questions. Adding to this a horrible eye infection rendering my left eye nearly useless, not to mention incredibly painful and light sensitive, I was one suffering woman.
“Why is your eye sick?”
“Because it got infected.”
“What is infected?”
“It means germs got into my eye and now I need medicine to get it better.”
“Why did germs get in there?”
“Because Mommy touched her eye while her hands where dirty.”
He paused, and at that moment I prayed that the line of questions be at an end. Eli had just hit that stage where everything was a great mystery to be unraveled, and Mommy was the key to knowledge. Counting the seconds since the last question, I breathed a sigh of relief when it seemed that he might finally be finished. That was one thing that I didn’t have to juggle at the moment I thought to myself.
“Mommy?”
He wasn’t done. “Yes darling.” I tried to reign in the tone of my voice as my youngest kicked, and shrieked for freedom. Eli was unfazed.
“Did God make germs?”
“Well honey, God did make germs but the fall is what caused people to get sick.”
“What’s the fall.” Noah screamed in self-determination.
“It was when sin was first introduced to the world honey.”
“When Adam and Eve ate the fruit?”
“Yes honey, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit.” Noah threw himself back on my lap and smacked his head off my shoulder. I winced. Noah, screamed louder.
“Why did they eat the fruit Mommy?”
“What honey?” I bounced the baby on my knee trying to calm him. “It’s ok Noah, it’s ok.”
“Why did they eat the fruit Mommy?”
“Because they were tricked by the serpent.”
How long had I been sitting out here? For goodness sakes can someone shut those blinds. “They believed what the snake said. But he was a liar, huh Mommy?”
“Yes baby, he lied.” The lady beside us got up and moved. Noah wailed, I threw my head back in frustration and smacked it off the glass window behind me.
I am going to kill my husband. “Why did they believe him?”
“Because of pride.”
Yes, I am going to kill him. Preferably with some blunt object. He needed sleep? HA! He didn‘t need sleep, just like I clearly don’t need vision in both eyes to deal with two very active children.
“What’s pride?”
“What Eli?” My temper was slipping. I could feel the last of my reserve crack like a chipped windshield in a hot garage.
“What is pride?” he asked pointedly most likely thinking I didn‘t understand his question.
“When we think that we know better or that we don’t need help.” Stabbing pain shot through my left eye as Noah poked me enjoying the reaction he was getting from doing so. What a neat new game he found.
“So they believed the snake because they didn’t think they needed God’s help?”
“Eli can we talk about this later?”
Come on! Those people just got here. Have they no compassion? Can they not see I am a woman in peril! Oh why, why would no one free me from my waiting room hell! I then wondered why I turned into a Emily Bronte when I was angry. I would deal with that later, right now Eli was not giving up so easily.
“Mommy come on, please Mommy.”
I had to give him credit for his persistence. “Well they thought God was lying to them.”
“Why?”
“Why what honey?”
“Why did they think God was lying to them?”
I was stunned. I had not expected this. When this line of questioning started the last place I thought it would end up in was a theology lesson. There are mature Christians that I knew that didn’t ask that question. It was one that I had pondered for awhile just recently and here my six year old was asking it like it was no big deal.
“Um.. I. I am not sure honey.”
“You don’t know?”
“No Eli, Mommy has an idea but she needs to check.”
“Check what?”
“Check with God.”
Eli got very serious. “You talk to God?”
“Yes darling, every day and when I have a question I can ask Him and find the answer in the bible.” Noah who for the last few moments seemed content playing with my wallet suddenly was no longer amused. He threw it to the ground and began to tell me in his own toddler way that in no uncertain terms his patience had too run out.
Lord, please. If you love me, even just a little bit, please have them call my….
“Andrea …”
THANK YOU JESUS!“Eli we will talk about this later. Now, grab your brother’s diaper bag they are calling Mommy.”
My son’s inquisitive nature is something I love about him. But at that moment not only was I overwhelmed by his astuteness but also by example that he was teaching me.
When we go into fellowship with God we cannot walk away unchanged. One of the first things that happens to us is that we develop a hunger. Some people have described this phenomenon as ‘the great ache’ a sensation that settles itself into the depths of our souls that is only sedated by the constant digging for knowledge and the desire to know and experience more of our Lord.
Why is this? Why is that pull for Him so great? Christ calls Himself the Living Water in the discussion He has with the Samaritan woman. Imagine if you will a woman who has come to this same well, probably all her life. Every day she pulls from this water source, only to exhaust her supply and have to come back the next day. Every single day it is the same thing, until one day a Jew, who obviously doesn’t know the ‘rules’ tells her about this water that after she imbibes she will never thirst again.
10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
At this point in the conversation this woman is not only intrigued but desperate.
“Sir, give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Does that not sound like the desperation of a woman who is tired of the emptiness of her brand of drink? She craved a water that could finally dull the dryness in her soul, that she tried for years to quench.
But this is where God always gives us MORE than just what we ask for. That is the beauty of God, this woman is asking for Christ to fill her belly, but instead He starts to fill her heart.
16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17"I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
How many times have we been left empty by what we used to fill our cups. How many times have we come to the same well, in the same square, to draw the same water, and then are surprised when we get the same result of emptiness at the end of the day? Then only to return the next to repeat the pattern. Christ is telling her
“You don’t have to do this anymore. I who speak to you am HE.” When I began my walk and began drinking of God’s word I found something miraculous happened. Not only was I satisfied after I read, but as I grew and dove deeper, His word would change with my ‘tastes.’
God tells us in Exodus that while the Israelites were in the wilderness God would litter the ground with bread in the mornings. Now in ancient Israel, bread was man's "staff of life," the basic staple food. While they could have “survived’ on just a diet of bread God knew they would not be satisfied, and God as He often does took it one step further:
Manna and Quail
1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" 8 Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD."
9 Then Moses told Aaron, "Say to the entire Israelite community, 'Come before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.' "
10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.
11 The LORD said to Moses, 12 "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.' "
13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.
When the Israelites where craving meat, God provided quail for His people.
Jesus said “Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes out of the mouth of God.”
His word is the sustenance that we
Need. That is the only nourishment that makes sense to us. When He met us in the very first dawning of our new life in Him, He knew that we would need to have more. We would desire Him in a way that was a kin to a starving man in that just walked into a buffet.
As I walked into the examination room on that hot day in early summer I couldn’t help but see a little of myself in my son’s thirst for knowledge. Remembering that just that morning I was sitting on the Father’s lap, my legs not quite able to reach the ground swinging freely as I sat and was given my portion of bread, meat, and water for the day. When one first reads the Words of the bible God meets us there at the banquet table. And there as we Open His word we commune with Him as He delights in our hearts and gives us what we crave most.
Psalm 53:2
God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
Psalm 63:1
[ A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. ] O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Matt 7
Ask, Seek, Knock
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
*No husbands were harmed during the writing of this blog*
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