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Many things are different for my husband and me now that our nest is empty. Take, for instance, the whole realm of food and eating. With our birdies gone, we sometimes eat out spontaneously. There is no longer a filled cookie jar on the counter. Now, we eat beans and rice NOT because it can feed a crew for pennies on the bean, but because we like that meal, especially with a side of sardines.
Our pantry has a particular white bin on the lower left shelf that contains snack bars for my husband and me. These healthy nuggets of deliciousness are dense with nutrition, readily available as an emergency snack for either of us or as sustenance for an extended hike when lovely summer weather beckons us to state park trails.
When hungry boys come for the weekend, my special bin of expensive protein bars… goes away. Ravenous 20-somethings could eat our entire bin of delicacies in one tummy-filling fling! And so the white container of bars goes to a non-disclosed place and warmly welcomed kiddos have other options for their weekend food-eating extravaganzas. Our adult kids know nothing about this hidden food stash.
I was reading in John recently and laughed out loud over something Jesus said that made me think about my boys and that white bin of bars. I don’t think Jesus’ original intent was humor, but surely He smiled with me over this thought.
In John 4, the disciples had left Jesus behind and went to town apparently to purchase food. They and their master were hungry, so they went on a mission to meet one of life’s most basic needs. When they returned to Jesus at Jacob’s well, they were shocked to find Him engaged in a cultural taboo: a conversation with a Samaritan woman. The disciples were stunned by this culturally inappropriate scene they witnessed but asked no questions.
The Samaritan woman rushed away in excited enlightenment. The eyes of her heart had been opened to the truth that she had just met the Messiah! She spread her news quickly, and people began to stream toward Jesus and His disciples.
Apparently, Jesus still hadn’t eaten the food the disciples had obtained for Him. They urged Him to eat what they had brought back from town.
Jesus told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.“
My imagination ran wild for a few seconds, and I pictured Jesus having a few granola bars tucked away in the folds of his tunic. My odd humor and imagination leaped to the white bin in our pantry and the fact that our boys “know nothing about” that food.
Jesus, however, wasn’t talking about food, food.
The confused disciples asked each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” I imagine them wondering amongst themselves where He’d had this food stashed that He was talking about.
Jesus wasn’t saying he had snacks in the pockets of His tunic. “My food,” Jesus said stunningly, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
Jesus was saying there is food that we eat, and there is food that we do. There is a harvest of wheat fields, and there is a harvest of white fields.
Jesus tells His disciples to open their eyes and see the fields that beheld crops of eternal life around them that were ripe for harvest: the white fields.
In Jesus’ exchange with the Samaritan woman, Jesus was accomplishing his Father’s will in a white field ripe for harvest. Jesus’ work at the well that day was more satisfying and of greater sustenance to Him than any food the disciples could offer him.
Do you hunger for opportunities for a Kingdom harvest? Is your appetite for God’s will being satisfied with the ministry opportunities He’s placed around you?
May God open our eyes to the food of God’s will in the white fields all around us.
(photo credit: Ernesta Vala, Unsplash)