The Lord's Prayer

“Teach us to pray;  the Lord’s prayer”.  These are my thoughts on what the verses from Luke mean to me; it’s how I’ve applied these precepts in my own life.

*        The opening sentence is “Our father in heaven; hallowed by your name”.  It’s like in a nutshell of who God is: We have on the one hand the invitation to see God as a very personal God who is like a father, and on the other, the Jehovah God to whom all things owe adoration and worship, and who reigns in heaven which is the beginning and end of all creation.  “Hallowed” means “all holiness belongs to you”.  . Some people struggle with the image of a Father God, because their earthly father was a very flawed character, We can feel compassion for those whose fathers were strict and severe, or violent or abusive, or feckless or work-shy; Nevertheless, we can at least relate on an intellectual level, to the ideal of a loving parent who has our best interests at heart, and who will always be interested in our lives;  who will forgive  us no matter what, who provides for us and looks out for us..” Our father” speaks of relationship;  of being able to talk to God in our own language, confident that He is listening. So we are invited to be in relationship with the One to whom all sacredness and power belongs.  And it seems that this prayer teaches us how to get our priorities right.  To start with acknowledging who God is and what He deserves from us, is a good beginning.

*        The next bit is “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This has absolutely nothing to do with our idea of earthly Kingdoms.  I confess, I’ve recited this bit since I was a child, not really seeing it’s significance, or knowing what it really meant.  But after my son died, it became more meaningful.  My son was a young policeman, and when we gathered at Wesley   for his funeral; as we walked up the aisle we could see that the church was absolutely packed;  everybody squashed into the pews, and the little slide out seats too, and outside, and in the vestry. As we bowed our head for the first prayer, I began to have a sort of mental picture of that packed church and I could see lots of slender soft ribbons floating down onto the heads of many of the people.  In later days, as I pondered and prayed over Ben’s death and where God was in all of it, I could still see the ribbons descending.  And I began to pray that whatever purpose God had in allowing Ben to die, that it would begin to be put into place on earth;  I began to pray, that in relation to Ben’s death, God’s will would be done on earth as it already was in heaven.  God’s will was done in heaven;  Ben was with him;  God had counted Ben’s days;  He’s counted all our days and he has the final word on what happens to us..  Now I prayed that this will and purpose would be done on earth too, for all those people on whom the ribbons settled.  I felt that in this one way at least, Ben’s death would help someone else find peace with God, as he himself had found. Perhaps this is fanciful to you;  the silly imagination of a grieving mother.  Maybe.  But this I know;  God’s will is a fact;  a force;  a divine energy;  the divine intellect and purpose in the shadow of which we can only stand in mystified awe.  I could never say that it was God’s will for Ben to die, but "in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Ben was called home to God according to God’s purpose and I have to believe it works for good in the big picture.  Jehovah and parent God, may your will be done for us, on earth, as it already has been done in heaven.

*        Now we come to the petitionary part of the prayer;  “give us this day our daily bread”  This is the only part of the prayer which is for our physical provision.  Or is it?  I’m sure it  means we should be asking for the bread of physical life.  Notice that we are instructed to ask only for what we need today, on a daily basis, not for our sustenance and health in the days to come.  Tricky, very tricky.  It goes against our inclination doesn’t it? We want to know that we will be secure with food and money, long into the future. I don’t think many of us have any idea at all of what it would be like not knowing where our next meal was coming from.  But for the people of Jesus’ day, this was a real prayer, prayed for their survival.. And we are to ask for others too “give us”, not “give me”. And when we ask for bread, we probably should be mindful of all those who grow it and cook it and transport it, and especially those who are dying for the want of it.

This idea of a providential God, supplying everything we need and looking out for us, is a bit of a two edged sword and is never simple.  God is not a Father Christmas giving us what we think we want or even need.  We can’t say “God is good since he saves our children;  and we DO say this “God must have been looking after him or her because they walked out of the wreckage unscathed”. But where does that leave people like me, whose child was not saved?  Why was Peter freed from his prison cell by an angel, but Stephen was stoned to death? Why was John the Baptist allowed to be killed at the whim of a silly girl?  We believe in God’s providence when we get what we want, and we must also trust that providence when He allows things to happen which we don’t want. If I’m going to believe in a God who is absolutely good and always has my best interests at heart, then when Ben died, I couldn’t turn away and declare that God isn’t a loving Father.  This is mysterious stuff which we won’t understand until we get to heaven.  It’s all mixed up with our free will, and God’s absolute will, but at the end of the day, we are still the child, with the burdens and cares of our lives, coming to God’s door, saying “Give to me what I need and I’ll trust you for what that is;  let your will be done for me and all that happens to me”.  In the face of the death of my son, this is all I could offer God.

Could these verses about bread also mean, that we should be asking for God’s very heart to be shared with us;  the bread of Life;  the Spirit.  After all, the rest of these verses  go on to speak of the Holy Spirit, and God’s delight and desire to share his personhood with us, through the Holy Spirit. (down in vs 11-13 where he says that as earthy fathers know how to give good gifts, so the Father longs to give us the Holy Spirit)

*        And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  We accept and embrace God’s forgiveness of us, but we aren’t always so energetic about forgiving others who have wronged us. It can be very hard to forgive people and our capacity to forgive is probably linked to how much they have hurt us.  Sometimes it can take a long time to forgive and it takes much prayer. Maybe this is why we are instructed to pray in this manner;  so that God can change us from resentful, ungodly people, into forgiving, Christ-centred people.   Prayer is not designed to change or persuade God; it is designed by God to change us! Prayer is a spiritual discipline through which we are formed into disciples of Jesus Christ. And a surprising shortcut to forgiving people is to pray for them. 

When my son had been dead for less than a year, I encountered a woman who took every opportunity to establish a pecking order, with me as the peckee.  She could have done me a good turn but she did me a bad one;  she could have shown compassion but she showed me veiled malice instead. In her defence, the things she said and did were petty, small-minded and if I’d been in a normal emotional state I could have flicked them off before they took hold. But I was in a very dark place, with a great wound on my heart and soul. It went on for months and as I drove home one rainy winter night, after another bad encounter with her, at a meeting during which I was not permitted to speak, I thought that I didn’t really want to be in the world any more. But after a few more months and with a skerrick more emotional strength, another way of escape presented itself. I began to pray for this lady.  I prayed for God to bless her;  I prayed that my attitude to her would change.  I prayed for God to love her and for me to love her the way He did. We can’t change how others treat us but we can change how we respond.  She had added to my burden of brokenness.  But prayer began to change the way I saw her and it allowed me to withdraw from the arena.  Her bossy pettiness began to fall on my deliberately-deafened ears.  I yielded her up to God and if that meant she always had the last word and the victory in the pecking order, then my reward was a healing emotional state. She began to seem like a little girl, always trying to prove how much she deserved praise and approval.  I began to see her with more compassion and understanding. Prayer did that. I’m sorry to be sharing something which is so personal, but I discovered that this praying for those who hurt us, actually works.

*        The next bit of this prayer is “And lead us not into temptation”. It’s no surprise that we are told to ask God not to lead us into temptation.  We could spend a month of sermons on this one.  Do not bring us to the time of trial.  Nobody wants trial. God knows how frail we are;  he knows we have need of confession. - We all of us have inclinations to wander to a particular area of sin;  for some it might simply be eating too much, or gossiping, or any type of natural appetite for which the human race is so prone to distort and adulterate. Temptation never strikes when we are strong and have the ramparts of our souls in place.  The evil one knows our weaknesses as well as the Christ does and he waits ‘til we are made vulnerable by any type of life circumstance through which he can fire an evil dart.  But with much praying and the help of the Spirit, we can overcome any temptation.  We have Christ’s example in that too.

*        We move on to the verses 6 to 13 and they are really about persistence;  the man who keeps knocking on his neighbour’s door, the verses about seeking and finding, asking and receiving.

In his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, the great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, puts it this way: Some things God cannot give to a person until he or she has prepared and proved his or her spirit by persistent prayer. Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door, until God says, "Lo! The House is ready. Now may the guest come in."

The Rev. Dr. Charles Reeb, pastor of United Methodist in St. Petersburg, Florida, has expressed this attitude very succinctly:  “When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistently enough, something happens on the inside of us. The discipline of prayer begins to awaken us to the Holy Spirit inside of us, and our motives and desires begin to change”.

It’s been said (Peter Annet) that those who pray persistently are like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock. As they pull on the anchor, they think they are pulling the rock to themselves, but they are really pulling themselves to the rock.

This is what persistent prayer does. Especially, if God’s answer to us, is eventually “no”. It pulls us closer to the rock of God’s divinity. . And in that continual coming, God changes us;  in that persistent coming, we are changed into what God wants for us.  In that constant coming, He shares his Holy Spirit with us. When our temporal needs are foremost in our minds, it might seem that this isn’t what we need.  But it IS all we need in the whole of our life’s journey, and is what is at the heart of this passage. Teach us to pray Lord?  Yes, he teaches us to pray, but it’s not an easy learning; we are often on a different wavelength, with different values and different ideas of what we need.  Yet, as we move closer to God in prayer, we may not always get what we ask for;  instead,  from the wisdom of God, we get what we need. We get what God wants for us, for our spiritual and eternal good. We find that as we move closer to our Rock, we begin to desire what God desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants to give us. Then the truth of Jesus' words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive. This is the secret of how to pray.  In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen

When God does nothing

There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist.  It is a very confronting story.  It’s confronting, because of the pictures it gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death.  We have this terrible picture of Herod and his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing to intervene. 

This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a deceitful woman and her spineless husband.  It is a story of the risks we take  when we choose to follow Christ.

John, the cousin of Jesus;  the one whose voice in the wilderness, foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested.  While John is in prison, Jesus is about and about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go back to before John’s death. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution.  And he hears what Jesus is doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  After his own glorious ministry, as the prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sings for joy?  It must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues.  It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad things happen.

Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the entire Palestinian region.  When Herod the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.

If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father.  A brief study of his character reveals that he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and manipulation.  We know this because of his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his wife.  He’s scheming for the way out of his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed.  The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner.  He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was also his niece).  He is a sleazy man.  He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by his wife.  He is weakness personified. 

This is the man, who so abused his authority against the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading.  This is the picture we have of the strutting weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too.  He scorned and mocked and thought he would have the last word. 

All of this background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it included?”  Why does the death of John include all this detail about Herod and his family?  Why do the preceding chapters tell us of John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell?  Where’s the good news in all this?

There is always the danger in religious circles to think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe.  Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.

The sobering reality is that even the very best of us can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison?  He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in 1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10; moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a brilliant doctor.  When the first world war came, he served as the 5^th Battalion’s Doctor on 25^th April 1915 at Gallipoli.  He survived the landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a creek bed.  After the 5^th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away fell to earth and struck him on the head.  He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but was struck down by a freak bullet.  Not only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor.  He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of his Mum.  She lost all her children, except this one;  she lost her husband and then her  only remaining child marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle front.  Life is not always fair. This story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will intervene, fix, heal, save.  But he didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.  And he didn’t save John the Baptist.  That’s why it’s such a confronting story.

But, these fates aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still God’s.  It’s why we need to keep our lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.

John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to?  How do we understand this story in the light of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and the afflicted being healed?  Can we step outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will and expectations on our hearts?  The truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful our circumstances are;  he himself becomes our hope, our strength;  we look beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come.  And in doing this, we begin to live now, with hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever that might be.

When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized that his task was done.  He had foretold of such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled.  So take heart, because even our suffering, our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that God is present in all our circumstances;  whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations.  The abundance of happy things, is no more a sign of God’s presence than the desolation;  the constant is God.  We tend to measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the mountain top.

Sometimes, like the story of Clunes Mathieson,  the very worst happens.  It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  And let’s remember, it’s not over until the resurrection.  The story of whatever has happened to us here, is not finished until God welcomes, recognises and renews us, on that Resurrection morning.

Why are we waiting?

"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

The account of the death of John the Baptist in Matthew 11, makes for gruesome reading. John, sitting in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution, hears what Jesus is doing, and sends his disciples to ask. How sad. How sad that, having given his life to the task of preparing the way for the Messiah, having said to Jesus at his (Jesus’) baptism, "It is you who should be baptizing me," having seen and done all this, John is finally plagued with uncertainty as he watches the Messiah fulfill his ministry. He just cannot be sure that this is what God intended the Messiah to be and do

The Bible also contains the well known stories of Mary’s rejoicing when she realizes she will be the mother of the Saviour of all mankind.  

Both of these people are waiting;  Mary is waiting in the way all pregnant women wait;  my daughter is pregnant at the moment and she and her husband are starting to prepare for the baby’s birth.  I too, await with eager longing to see this little new life.  We wonder whether it will be a girl or a boy;  we wonder what the baby will look like;  what sort of person will it be?  But in Mary’s case, she is also waiting for the restoration of her reputation and for the fulfilment of God’s prophesy to her, because although she knows she is pregnant by the holy spirit, we can imagine that perhaps the people in her world found this very hard to believe, and would have been quick to condemn her has promiscuous - a very harsh judgement with terrible consequences, in Mary's culture.  People would undoubtedly have been very unkind to her.  She must have spent some anxious times when it became apparent she was not married but was pregnant, and even after the birth, Joseph married her of course, but down the years, she must have borne the taunts of people who never really believed that the child she bore was not just the child of a human father.

She waits as he grows, to see what sort of man he will become.  She waits to see evidence of his divinity, she waits while he begins his ministry. She must have worried about him. She must have wondered where his destiny would take him.;  indeed the bible says “she pondered these things in her heart”.  She waited and watched and wondered.  And finally, she waited at the foot of the cross for him to die.

Waiting is often very difficult.  Waiting even on worldly things can be a frustrating business.  How often have we fretted about how long we’ve had to wait in the supermarket queue?  In reality, it’s never more than a few minutes.  And just as an aside, I always use this time to pray for the people around me.  It’s my way of turning something with potential for frustration, into something much more pleasant and positive.

Waiting on test results is often very difficult.  In most cases, we find waiting difficult.

Waiting on God is also difficult.  What does God say to us about waiting?  He has, after all, been telling his people to wait, for thousands of years, from when he told Abraham he would be the heir of thousands of people of God, and impelled Abraham to wait until he brought this about, to this story in the new testament of Mary and her waiting for the Saviour to be born. 

In John's case too, he must have wondered why Jesus didn't come to the prison and save him.  He was his cousin and the messenger to Christ's coming.  

 We might spare a thought for John’s parents.  They must have also waited a very lonely and anxious vigil, to hear news of his death. They would be hoping for his release, but really, I think they knew in their hearts, this would not happen.

We too, in our waiting, hope for the best outcome;  we want the test results to be good;  we want our child to be healed;  we want our financial worries to be over. 

But life isn’t like that;  sometimes the worst happens.  God doesn't always rescue us.  We see that from the death of John the Baptist. But just as we must walk out into the dark to see the stars, sometimes we have to experience terrible darkness in our lives, in order to see the stars of God's presence in our lives. It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  Our anxious waiting can give birth to a new understanding of the peace of the Christ child. 

Whether we are waiting, like John, alone, with the threat of something dreadful over our heads, or like Elizabeth, expecting a child who will become the messenger of the Messiah, or like Mary, expecting the fulfilment of God’s promise to her, we can always wait, with the hope and peace of God in our hearts.

Sustain us, Father, with the power of your love on our journey to meet the One who is coming; strengthen our weak hands, make firm our feeble knees, and open blind eyes to the dawning of your kingdom; that our hearts may rejoice with joy and singing as we behold the majesty of our God. We ask this through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen ( Prayer was written by Rev David Beswick, Uniting Church  website)

Job found treasure

Job

42 Then Job replied to the Lord:

² “I know that you can do all things;
    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.’
⁵ My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
⁶ Therefore I despise myself

    and repent in dust and ashes.”....
¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

¹² The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. ¹³ And he also had seven sons and three daughters.

I am acquainted with a youngish man who is a well-known face on my local news.  Recently his job was made redundant and he now has to find another job.  This could be very stressful, especially when he has a young family and a mortgage. When I talked to him briefly about this – asking him how he was getting on finding a new position, he was very positive and upbeat.  “I’m sure God has a plan” he said.

The very next day, I was speaking to another acquaintance, a freshly minted teacher, in her first school.  When I asked how she was going, during the course of the conversation, she said something like “Oh well, if I stuff up teaching these kids, I’m sure God still has a plan for them”. I think she was trying to say that even though she might be making mistakes in her first year out, God would be able to override that.

And then just through the week, another Christian and I chatted about retirement,  Super funds, the stock market, and his circumstances, and he also said “I’m sure God has a plan”.

These quirky coincidences set me to thinking about what Christians believe about the plans of God. Does God have a plan for our lives?  And does God still have a plan when we “stuff up”, as my young friend so inelegantly put it?  How does the plan work when someone else does something to us which causes profound and long-lasting impact?  Where is God’s plan when everything goes wrong? 

Let’s have a look at these few verses in Job.

Then Job replied to the Lord:

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Job says these words to God, not at the beginning of the story when everything is right with the world, but at the end of his terrible journey of suffering. A daring interpretation of the context would suggest that God’s hand, if not causing the suffering, allowed it to happen. 

The book of Job is played out against the fact that the devil makes a wager with God.  At the beginning of the book, the devil says to God “I bet if I take away all his good fortune, he’ll abandon you”.  And God says “You’re on”.  God consenting to such a wager is, in itself, hard to fathom. The book goes on to speak of Job’s terrible plight, his discourse with God and with his friends.  But in this final chapter, after all his tantrums, he says to God “I spoke of things I didn’t know or understand;  my ears have heard you now and my eyes have seen you. Speak and I will listen”.  We might interpret that as Job saying “I’ve been an ignorant man on these matters and tried to tell you, Almighty God, what to do and how to rule the world.  I’m sorry for my arrogant presumption”  Job has been on a very difficult spiritual journey;  a journey to spiritual honesty.

That’s the overview, but I wanted to explore the idea of “no plan of God’s can be thwarted”.

God does indeed have a purpose for our lives, but it’s not usually the one we imagine. Our ideas of perfect plans are tied to earthly outcomes, to bottom lines; to comfortable lifestyles.  

God’s ultimate plan is the one where He sends His own son to die for us, so that when we stand on that other shore, we can cross into God’s country;  into the presence of God, unblemished and blameless by what we’ve managed to mess up on earth.

This amazing purpose of God did not involve everything falling into place in a favourable and comfortable set of circumstances.

It involved humiliation, violence, hardship, malevolence and ultimately not just physical death but spiritual death – a trip to Hades itself - for our sakes.

God always has a plan but they are always geared to the spiritual values, rather than our earthly ones.

Does He then involve himself in our daily lives and decisions?  - who we marry, what job we do, what house we buy; how safe we stay?

I honestly don’t know.  If you’ve had a long and happy marriage, you might say “Oh yes, God planned it all”.  It was God’s doing.

But if, like me, you were damaged by an abusive, unfaithful spouse, then you may wonder what God was doing when he allowed that person to walk into your life. 

If you’ve spent a long and illustrious career in a job you loved doing, then I’m sure you will be first to say that God’s plan came to fruition for you.  But if your job has been back-breaking toil, with not much financial remuneration, and time spent in a caustic workplace, amongst ferocious workmates who bullied you, then where is God’s plan in all that?

We live in a free and prosperous country, but I wonder what Syrian Christians think about the plan of God for them?

But even here in our fortunate country, our lives are all flawed; things frequently don’t work out the way we think they should.  This was Job’s experience too;  He did not reap the harvest he should have had, for a life lived with integrity.  He got, instead, what he didn’t deserve.

I’ve puzzled over these things during the course of my own dark days, and I have concluded that God always has a plan for our spiritual well-being. And just as He used the terrible happenings in the life of Jesus, for his plan of Salvation, so He can use the terrible things in our lives too, to bring healing to our souls.  That is a paradox isn’t it?;  that terrible things, which should bring us undone, can just as surely bring us closer to God.  And when we are closer to god, we are actually healthier spiritually.

The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a terrible thing, yet it was all woven into the plan of Christ’s death;  the Roman soldiers were the means of delivering the death of Christ.  Pilate also played His part.  These were all heinous things, but they were allowed by God because they were part of His plan for our redemption.

His glorious plan was achieved – the conquering of spiritual death was achieved through suffering and everything going wrong.

So it can be for us, if we have the good sense to keep following the Christ through all the brokenness and messy circumstances of our lives.  We too can be triumphant over even the things which impact us profoundly, even though they are terrible things.  I find that very comforting.

Some of you may remember the chorus “Something Wonderful”.  It goes “something wonderful;  something good.  All my confusion, you understood.  All I had to offer you was brokenness and strife, but you made something beautiful with my life. 

When I sing that at home though, I always change the middle line into “all you had to offer me was brokenness and strife”.  Because sometimes that’s what it seems like, when everything goes wrong.  God seems to offer us strife and then abandons us to it. This is exactly what Christ felt when he hung on the cross.  You’ll remember he said “My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

This was how Job felt too.

Chapter 19: "He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
⁹ He has stripped me of my honour
and removed the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
he uproots my hope like a tree.
¹¹ His anger burns against me;
he counts me among his enemies.

Chapter 13:24: Why do you hide your face
and consider me your enemy?

And consider these verses from the Psalms:

I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?' "

And this from Paul in  2 Corinthians 1: 8-9:  "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,^[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself." Paul, the great Apostle despaired of life itself. 

The bible is full of verses about the Saints of God grappling with the awful stuff, and wondering how it fits in with the idea of a loving, providential Father God.

We don’t want the strife – we want it all to be rosy.  Anthony Warlow, Australian Tenor with a glorious voice, starred in a Musical a few years ago, called “Jekyll and Hyde”.  Not sure it was very long-lived, but it had a song in it called “This is my moment”, and it part, it goes :

"Every endeavour,
I have made - ever -
Is coming into play,
Is here and now - today!

This is the moment,
This is the time,
When the momentum and the moment
Are in rhyme!"

But sometimes, nothing is in rhyme;  the stars don’t line up, the Universe isn’t in harmony….. it all goes wrong… and we  want a plan B.

I’m afraid there is often no Plan B. Awful stuff happens.

Why does God allow the awful stuff?  If we read Job, I’m not sure we should ask that;  God is God;  it’s not up to us to tell Him what He can and can’t do.

I know one thing though – God is still in control in the terrible stuff, just like He was when He allowed Judas to betray Jesus and when he allowed the devil to make bets on Job’s life.  He works within the terrible stuff. He can always bring good out of bad.  Romans 8: 28 “All things work together for God for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose”.  He can always offer us spiritual sight.  He can always give us gladness for mourning, even in the face of tragedy. And ultimately He will always give us strength to endure.

It may take a while;  it may take some soul searching and honest conversation with God.  But He’s never been averse to that.  If we go back to the book of Job, we see that Job really gives God an earful – he really has a go at God, but in the end God doesn’t reproach him for that.  After all, God realizes it’s an honest tirade and part of the journey of Job’s grief. God rebukes the self-righteous friends who are untouched by tragedy but have so much know-it-all advice to give the suffering Job.

Ultimately, God says to Job “I am God and it’s not up to you to make the plans.  I created you;  you can’t dictate my purposes”.

Job’s heart and soul are big and he repents of his railing and ranting at God.  He admits he is not God and that he spoke of things he didn’t understand.  The relationship between himself and God is restored, because Job remains in touch with God; and is humble before God; and is honest with God. Job finds peace.

The hope in this message is tangible.  This can be our experience too, in whatever tragedy or failure has occurred in our lives.

And there is a peace, finally, after all our conversations with God and our anger and our cries of “it’s not fair”.  .. when we have hurled our accusations and puzzlement and raw grief at God;  in the end, we find He is not angry with us for that. 

But He IS God and who are we in the end to question what He does or allows?  This is how Job coped;  this is how he processed his grief and his affliction.  There is no plan B where God intervenes.  God’s plan is always to be present with us and to bring triumph out of tragedy;  to bring eternal spiritual values to the disquiet of our suffering;  to bring us finally to acceptance of what’s happened and to bring peace to our sorrowing heads.

His plan is always to be present with us no matter what happens and to make us more like himself. 

So we come to the final chapter of the book of Job and find that God restores his fortune. 

That’s actually not the good bit and I’ll tell you why.  The good bit is the journey Job has taken to spiritual wholeness and a deeper understanding of God. Job emerged stronger and wiser and humbler than he was before.

And if you are tempted to think that isn’t the good bit, let me tell you of a little story I heard on Radio National the other day.  The topic was poker machines.  Poker machine revenue accounts for 10% of state income in NSW.  Australians lose 12 billion a year on the pokies.  In a club in Fairfield, of the 39 million revenue this club makes, 37 million of it comes from poker machines. The machines are geared for the player to lose.  They are designed to let you win little amounts, so you keep playing and they can be played with credit cards. The venues have no clocks, so you lose track of time. 

So a lady was interviewed as part of this programme.  She began playing them after her son took his own life.  She explained that the appeal was the hypnotic soothing state playing the machines induced in her.  She was grief-stricken and floundering and this became her escape and her coping mechanism. I’m sure none of us would judge her for that.

But she became addicted.  This was a well- educated, well-incomed woman, who had something terrible happen in her life, and all she had were the pokies.  She eventually kicked the habit, but was then overtaken by alcohol abuse.  She finally found the strength, with some professional intervention, to kick both things.

But not everyone has the resources to see a health professional every week… and they lose everything.  They become irrevocably broken.

How much better it would have been if she had cried and raged at God, in her grief, as Job did.  Indeed, as some of us have.

Job’s way of coping was much to be preferred and that’s why I say that the end, where Job found peace and healing, after his very honest interaction with God, is the good bit.

God’s plan is always to keep us from falling.  I cannot tell you why God chose to take bets on Job’s life;  I cannot tell you why he doesn’t have a Plan B.  I cannot tell you why he allows terrible things or why He sometimes seems to abandon us or is silent in the face of our suffering. 

But I can tell you that God’s plan IS always to keep us from falling.

And it’s not over, ‘til it’s over. The mystery of our redemptive suffering will one day be explained on that heavenly shore, by the Risen Lord who has kept an account of all our tossings, who holds our tears in his bottle and who has written our names in His book of Life.

I’d like to conclude with those lovely verses from the book of Jude, vs 24-25:

²⁴ Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,

²⁵ To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

Lessons about intercessory prayer, from the book of Job.

A little while ago, I attended an “Art for the Soul” retreat at St Clements, at Galong (in NSW, Australia).  It’s run by one of the Nuns up there.  It was a very refreshing experience.  I found that I was the only little Protestant amongst a whole pond full of Catholics.  That didn’t bother me.  During the course of one of the sessions, this lovely Nun said to me “Catholics always concentrate on suffering;  we often look at our faith through a perspective of suffering;  we have the cross with Jesus on it whereas Protestants have the empty cross, with it's connotations of hope for the resurrection”.   As she was speaking, I thought that we Protestants have been the other way round; we tend to look at our faith from a resurrection perspective. And that’s a good thing, but sometimes I think we don’t allow room for lamentation in our worship.  We have both Job and Bartimaeus in our readings this morning, and they were both well acquainted with lamentation.

So it might be that we will find the whole book of Job a bit confronting.  Our reading today comes from the very last chapter;  the “good” one where Job is recompensed for all his suffering.  We are tempted to think that’s all there is to it, but I’m convinced there is such a wealth of wisdom in the book of Job, and I have to thank a sermon from that long-ago preacher Charles Spurgeon for drawing my attention to verse 8;  the one in which God says “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.

So, it’s actually intercessory prayer I want us to think about this morning. What brought Job to the point of praying for his friends, when he himself was so desperate and despairing?  I want to observe some points about intercession for others and then some ideas of who we should pray for.

The book of Job is played out against the fact that the devil makes a wager with God.  The devil says “I bet if you take away all his good fortune and he’ll curse you”.  And God sys “You’re on”.  God consenting to such a wager is, in itself, hard to fathom. The book goes on to speak of Job’s terrible plight, his discourse with God and with his friends.  But in this final chapter, he says to God “I spoke of things I didn’t know or understand;  my ears have heard you now and my eyes have seen you. Speak and I will listen”.  We might interpret that as Job saying “I’ve been an ignorant prat on these matters and tried to tell you, Almighty God, what to do and how to rule the world.  I’m sorry for my arrogant presumption”  Job has been on a very difficult spiritual journey. So really, in our readings today, we have blind Bartimaeus in the gospel receiving physical sight, and we have Job, receiving spiritual sight.

But look at verse 10 “after Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before”.  Now it would be very dangerous to assume from this that “oh well, I’m in trouble, I’ll pray for my friends and God will intervene”.  I don’t think that’s how it is at all.  It doesn’t mean that if we pray for others, God will make fortune smile on us. In the context of Job, it seemed more like a sign that God had called off the wager. The King James Version of Verse 10 says “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends”.

God brought good from bad, even though Job was ruined without reason.  God was in control and always had a plan in mind.   God always knew the end from the beginning and everything in between. I believe a lot of the wisdom and sense in this story hinges on Job’s journey to spiritual humility, and of gaining a different vision of who God is, despite our ideas of what’s fair and what’s unfair. It’s also about making sure we are not like Job’s friends; about whom God says “they have not spoken of me what is right, like my servant Job has”;  a flaky lot of hypocrites and religious posturers, they were.  Know everything;  know nothing;  that’s them.

It’s Job’s prayer which stops God from dealing with them according to their folly.  That’s a very powerful outcome of all Job’s distress.  And it’s the trouble and resultant refining of Job’s already upright character which ensures that this power will be put to good use.  That’s a long way to answering why God allowed the sorrows in the 1^st place  So, if we follow Job’s example, we will pray for those who sleight and misunderstand us.

To be an intercessor, we need to realize a few things:

1.                  Intercessional prayers, in the light of the book of Job, seem to work better if we have been though trials.  We are fitted for God’s purpose through trials.   It’s no mistake that Job could pray for his friends even after his own life had been decimated.  Job knew what suffering felt like;  knew in the end that he had been a touch arrogant.  Through our own grief, we develop the ability to walk in the shoes of others who are grieving.  It gives us compassion and empathy and it’s from this storehouse we can then pray for others and really petition God’s heart.

2.                  Intercession for others is a spiritual journey not a means to an end. Job’s suffering took him on a journey of self-discovery and an awareness of God in a very personal way.  When we travel thus, close to a suffering so great, we can’t do it without depending on God, we get to know our place in God’s world;  we discover there are things we cannot control;  we realize how much more there is to life than just what we plan and want for ourselves.  We are so vulnerable, so helpless, so wretched we no longer have control over these forces of pain and we lean on the very heart of God to give us strength. We are, if we allow it, brought close to God’s character;  the very divinity of God;  we transcend our suffering and begin to see others the way God sees them.  We put off ourselves and rely on God.  When self takes a back seat in this way, we surpass our suffering and God’s spirit himself mingles himself with our spirit and we are transformed to be more like him.  Jesus himself intercedes for others - and we too, from our nobler, ego-reduced viewpoint, want to pray for them too. 

3.                  Notice God doesn’t punish Job even though he has questioned and despaired.  His is an honest response to anguish and God is not displeased by that.  His dialogue of despair with God, is part of the journey.  We must conclude from this that when we cry out to God with honest questions, this is not a bad thing – it’s when God is there with us, even though, at the time He might seem silent.  After all, we are still speaking to God – we are still in relationship with God.  Something happens in that calm candle flame of our own spirit, when, in the midst of grief or bewilderment, God’s spirit begins to burn with our own.  It’s a very sacred, mystical transference of the divine nature. 

4.                  Intercession requires grace;  the experience of God’s grace to us, which we use to intercede for others.  We see them as flawed like us, and loved by God, like us.  Mercy and compassion are the big sisters of intercession.

5.                  It’s a sign of spiritual health and healing, and victory in spite of trouble.  If we are finally at peace enough with what God has allowed for us, we can embrace praying for others.  We have travelled a long way in our efforts to grapple with awful circumstances and are still trusting God. Strength and power are ours when we pray from this vantage point. This leads me to my next point:

6.                  There is power in our prayers.  Prayers of righteous people can change things.  These verses in Hebrews 12 spring to mind: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”.  There is something amazing which happens when a righteous saint of God, who has stood firm through trial, then prays for others.  . The prayer of the righteous doesn’t mean we have to be perfectly good.  It means we need to walk in the light of Christ’s spirit which will tell us where we err and prompt us to confess it to Him.  It’s our confession and reliance on Him by faith which makes us righteous, not our outward behaviour

7.                  There is Christ’s example, and even from the cross he prayed “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing”. We have to ask in the name of the High Priest Jesus, who once for all sacrificed for us, as in Hebrews reading.  We have to have a relationship with Him, the great Redeemer. And because he suffered, he is our greatest example of the power of intercessory prayer.

Who then should we pray for? Praying for people who get on our nerves is hard;  praying for those who have sleighted us but without intent or malice is harder;  praying for people who have gone out of their way to mistreat or hurt is just because they can, is very difficult indeed.  We can pray for:

1                                For those lost to the gospel. They are all around us.  We can use the nightly news to pray for those who are so in need of the redemptive power of God, not just for their personal salvation, but for the enrichment of our society too.

2                                We can pray Our friends who are proud of their religiousness;  those who are insensitive, haughty.  Those who have wronged us. How do we pray for people like this?  How did Job do it?  I’ll tell you how I do it. I say to God “I don’t feel like praying for this person, but because you require it, I will”. To be sure, it’s a very wooden, uninvolved prayer at first. But when we pray in this way over time, gradually we ourselves are changed and we find we can actually pray for those who have wronged us, with forgiveness and goodwill in our hearts.

3                                Our friends who are ill,  or sorely tried, dispirited, or who are battling temptation.  Apparently, Internet porn is the fastest growing industry on the worldwide web.  If we know people, even Christians, who are trapped in this, our prayers of intercession could be the means of setting them free.

4                                The wider community.  We are out in the world every day;  we can intercede for people in our own circle of friends and workmates;  we can intercede for people in the most dire and degraded situations.  We can pray as we see them from our cars or in the street, or on the news. We can petition God’s heart on their behalf and He can set in place, the means to answer those prayers.

5                                We can pray for very evil people;  people who have gone beyond just selfishness – people who use others for their own gratuitous power.  Organised crime, violent dictators, and malevolent military forces. Our prayers can break forces of evil and summon the angel host to rescue others.

6                                And finally, we can pray that what we give in financial ways to help others will be multiplied millions of times, so that all can be fed.

So, if you feel yourself in the dark vale of trouble or affliction this morning, take heart, because God always has a plan, and will always bring us through, with the tree of our soul laden with much fruit.  Some of that bounty will be the ability to intercede on behalf of others and know that God hears and answers our prayers. Amen.

A loaf of bread, the walrus said....

John 6:51-58 New International Version (NIV)

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

I’m going to start my blog with a stanza from a poem. You may even be familiar with it:

A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,

Is what we chiefly need:

Pepper and vinegar besides

Are very good indeed —

Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,

We can begin to feed.'

This is a poem about a Walrus and the Carpenter who lure the young oysters out onto the beach and then feed on them.  Oysters and pepper and vinegar…. And feeding on bread.  It’s by Lewis Carroll, from his book “Through the Looking-Glass”.   

Our reading today is about Jesus telling his disciples that he is the living Bread from heaven and that anyone who feeds on this bread will live forever. There are some edgy verses in there, especially vs 53  “⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you

The Jews find the idea of eating the flesh of Jesus a bit hard to understand. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat” they ask.

This passage has been debated down the centuries and it would take a better scholar than me to explain the deep theological reasons for this. And I’m not going to try

What we’re going to think about this morning is what it might mean to us when we see Jesus as the bread of life, in a symbolic sense.

I think it could be fair to say, that we are now a feasting nation;  I would go so far as to say we are the party nation.  We love to eat, drink and party. Everything about our life seems to revolve around food.  Flick through any of the TV channels and there are literally dozens of programmes about food – preparing it, eating it, travelling to other places to find and cook it;  reality TV shows about cooking it in competition with others;  there are restaurant guides; diet guides, scientific facts about what the next super food is.  There are magazines devoted to food;  books, blogs, social media pages and of course advertising.  I’ve even seen instructions on how to crochet food – cute little crocheted patty cakes and the like! Even unrelated things like lipsticks are created in food-like colours… cheeky chocolate;  paint colours are called things like pale avocado.  And there are more varieties of bread than you can throw a scone at!

As a society, we are absolutely crazy about food.

It’s no accident that Jesus uses so much imagery about Himself and His Kingdom and relates it to living, growing plants and processes in the world (I am the true vine;  the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed etc).  He did that because it was something people could relate to, because they were directly connected to growing food to eat, to keep them alive.

But I don’t think the people of Jesus day could ever comprehend or understand our absolute addiction to and worship of food.  For a start, they would never be able to imagine the reality of so MUCH food.  I heard on sbs the other day that there are now more people dying from too much food, than from not having enough.  And I wonder what God thinks about that?

It’s harder for us western Christians to understand the significance of Jesus being the living bread for our souls (and therefore essential for our spiritual health), because we are far less dependent of bread for our physical sustenance, than were the people of Jesus’ day.

How then, are we to appreciate these verses about Jesus being the very stuff of life, in every way, when we can take food so much for granted?  How can we cleanse our minds a little and get back to the basic idea of bread? How do we do that?

To try and re-engage with bread as a Godly life-force purely in our own strength is to put the cart before the horse. No!  We need some spiritual power to get us back into the right attitude to bread.

Let’s try to remember three things:

Firstly, we have the verses in John which tell us that Jesus is this bread and he has laid down his life for us.  .  The bread we eat during Communion are symbols of Christ’s body and blood given in exchange for every awful thing we’ve ever said; every unclean thought we’ve ever had;  every lie we’ve ever told;  every prejudice;  every wrong attitude.  In fact everything about us which is unholy and imperfect is covered by Christ’s death on the cross.  Bread, and His body are connected forever as the sacrifice and the symbols of that sacrifice.

Secondly, the spiritual bread is from heaven.  We’re told that in verse 51. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. We have all the divine nature of heaven available to us, spiritual strength; holiness, renewal, purity;  to be nourished and fed by the indwelling Spirit-bread of Jesus is to have access to all the heavenly virtues.  He can overcome any temptation (even the temptation to eat too much).  And more, he is the ongoing, ever-renewing source of spiritual energy and strength whenever I turn my life over to His control. He dwells and abides with us, as bread for our souls.  He’s food for now (on earth) and food to go (to heaven).

We have a portal into the dwelling place of the eternal spirit which was present at the creation of all things. I believe, like all the theologically uneducated people before me, that on a simple spiritual level, Jesus is the Bread of Life in all senses;  He encompasses every type of Life there is;  earthly and heavenly.  The bread is Creator Life; is physical life; is spiritual awakening.  All of these are aspects of Jesus, who was there when God called the world into being.

We need not do it in our own strength. He can constantly renew and nourish our hearts and spirits.  He can change us here and now, from glory to glory, until at last, when we see Him face to face, it will be the ever so gently passing from our world to His, in the twinkling of an eye.  That leads us to the third point… the forever bit.

We have the promise that whoever eats this bread will live forever. We have His promise that when we physically die, we go to be where He is. Vs 58 says “This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

But how do we really feed on the Bread of Life, and claim this eternal inheritance?  Do we just come and take communion once a month?  Is that what these verses mean?  I don’t think that would quite cut it.

We have to invite the living, dynamic Christ into our hearts and lives on a daily basis, to be able to eat the real bread of His life and His divinity and His Spirit.  We have to really understand and believe and acknowledge the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  And we have to remain and abide in Christ. That’s the whole crux of the matter.  The bread of Life gave himself for us and if we don’t live and believe on that daily, we may as well paste a picture of a slice of bread on our heads.

We do need to come regularly and take communion together.  But the eating of the bread and wine are symbols.  They are just the outward appearance of what should be going on inside our hearts.  We have the outward symbols and we have the inner bread which is baked in heaven.  If we physically eat the symbols, without searching for and abiding in the living risen Christ, we die to God, even while we are alive physically.   

We have to take a few minutes every day to read the Bible, privately, at home.  Some of us have perhaps gotten out of this habit.

We should talk to God.  Some of us set aside a time every day and read the Bible and talk to God. I’m sure you’ve discovered long ago, what works for you.  I can’t read the Bible at night because I end up falling asleep;  I can’t pray at a set time every day;  it’s too regimented and contrived.  I just pray through the day, as I think of things.

I lived for years near the coast, at a little place called Tinonee, near Taree on the Mid North Coast.

Another resident of this village was a Christian man of Scottish descent.  He was the epitome of the Scottish personality (or the way we think of Scottish people being). He was rather a dour man but with a very dry, and sometimes cutting sense of humour.  He did not suffer fools gladly. He was also extremely careful, not just with his money, but with his worldly goods as well.  He was recycling long before it was the norm. Pause….And he was a bit eccentric.

I would often encounter him on my way to and from work on the road from Tinonee to Taree.  He rode a very economical 250cc motorbike. It rains a lot more on the coast than it does here and when it rained, this man was nothing if not inventive;  I would see him riding his motorbike carefully along the road, with his raincoat on…. And to stop his gloves getting wet, he would wear bread bags on his hands. I’m not joking nor jesting, he wore bread bags on his hands (demonstrate) to keep his hands dry. He would insert his gloved hands into the bags and secure them at the wrist and off he’d go.  He didn’t care that it looked a bit silly. He was a very practical gent and I’m sure it was perfectly natural to re-use the bread bags as little raincoats for his gloves.

But what if he just took the bread out of the bag and threw it away?  What if he didn’t actually eat the bread before using the bread bags as glove covers?

So my point is that unless we take the Lord Jesus into our hearts and lives, we will be like my Scottish friend;  we will be just wearing the bread bags without eating the bread.