Eat and Drink
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
No Money Required
Have No Fear.
All Points To God With Us,
Even The Shadows.
Jeremiah 16:19
O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge on the day of trouble.
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2 Timothy 1:11-12
For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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God is our strength, stronghold, and refuge. The strength God gives us is none other than what fuels our lives: living water and nourishing food, freely given.
The invitation is repeated in the Old Testament Reading for this coming Sunday (Isaiah 55:1-9)
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
As Paul wrote, we entrust our very lives to our loving, gracious, and generous God.
Though we suffer, we need not be ashamed. The world’s ways are not God’s ways. Always taking, taking, taking giving so little in return, leaving so many to suffer at the hands of those who greedily hoard the necessities of life for themselves.
There is no shame in imitating Jesus, generous, gracious, and loving of all, even one’s enemies.
When the days of troubles descends upon us, from within and from outside, we need not fear. Fear leads to panic. Panic leads to chaos. Chaos leads to loss, suffering, and death. No, we need not start down that deadly path. For our God is not distant. For our God is not impotent. Our God is omnipresent, even with us, and omnipotent. Creator of all. More powerful than the most destructive forces within ourselves, within others, and around us in the universe.
God is our strength, our stronghold, our refuge. God calls, come all you who are thirsty and hungry and afraid … come, eat, drink, and be comforted, for as God spoke to Julian:
“Sin is necessary, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
[Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. M. L. de Mastro (Garden City, NY: Image, 1977), 124.]