Heavenly. Mystery. Meal.

A friend recently updated her Facebook status to read: “God is blessing our faces off.” While that shouldn’t be taken literally, I understand and corroborate the motivation that inspires such a status.

God is blessing us . . .

Taste the words. Let their flavors mingle in your mouth and delight your tongue.

Swallow. Let the message flow down to your belly, infuse your bloodstream with its power, cleanse your hurts.

Be. Just be. Lay on the floor and weep if you must, laugh if you can, feel silence wrap your body in its healing warmth.

God is blessing . . .

I’m tasting, swallowing, being.

Many of my petitions remain unanswered, but my heart is filling. Filling with the type of overwhelming grace that can only be supernatural, only be Manna – the Heavenly mystery meal. As the children of Israel questioned when bread rained down on them in the desert, I question sometimes the gifts that Christ chooses to bestow. “What is this?” I ask, very sure that what was given was not what I had in mind. And then . . quietly . . . slowly . . . He answers:

This is what you needed when you thought something else was better.

This is what you needed when you thought you couldn’t resist the fire any longer, thought the flames were sure to burn your clothes, singe your skin, raze your heart.

This is what you needed when you were too empty and too hungry to eat or drink anything else.

This is what you needed . . . Me – the Heavenly mystery meal. Me raining down from Heaven. Me broken. Me consumed. Me as Gift. “Take and eat. This is My Body broken for you.”

This hollow, empty flesh ache is the brokenness needed for His breath to revive.
If the reed wasn’t hollowed out, it could never play the shepherd’s song?
And though the empty branch is naked, frost bitten. It only waits in the dark for the deep swell of budding.
These weaknesses are simply openings for His strength to be revealed.
The most affective medicine is usually the bitterest pill to swallow isn’t it? Yet this medicine is somehow making my soul ready to be a part of an eternal story.
It is a preparation for burial, it is an anointing. It is pure Nard.
I trust in this providence in the depth of my being, yet I am still afraid at times.
I know He is calling me out.

~Bread for the Journey Blog

I pray that my own written words, the image posted above from Bread for the Journey blog, and the words of blog writer SuzyQ from Bread for the Journey posted above bless you today. To read more of the excerpt posted in this blog, please visit  http://sailingbystarlight.blogspot.com/2010/11/bread-for-journey.html#!/2010/11/bread-for-journey.html