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COME TO THE FEAST

This invitation to abundant life in Isaiah 55 is one of my favourite passages in the Bible. It recognises the deep thirst within us all for something we are missing. For the people of Israel, captives in Babylon, it was their homeland for which they yearned, and hardly dared hope they would be able to return. Deeper than that, God longed for them to return to him, so he could feast with them and give them the love, the joy and the peace they longed for.

It is the same with us. We know there is something missing in our life, something deep for which we yearn, but some of us have been separated from God for so long that we don't know what we are searching for, and look in all the wrong places. As Isaiah says: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?

Some of us fool ourselves thinking that money and possessions will fix the problem; others that popularity or having many friends (even if they are just Facebook friends) will meet our deep needs. The love of a partner or family goes some of the way, for at its best it reflects God's love for us, but even partners and family let us down, or are lost, and cannot meet all of this deep longing.

In fact this deep longing is because we are created this way - for a relationship with God. It is the Spirit of God that gives us life, and which longs to be reunited with its source. For now, we only know partial, incomplete fellowship with God. At the Lenten study on Wednesday people shared how it can burst through into our world and into our life in many different ways. For some it was in a sermon which seemed to speak directly to them; for another at communion, for others as they gave themselves in service and for another in contemplating our amazing creation.

God still calls us to feast with him, to quench our thirst and feed us along the way.

Robert Johnson
Third Sunday in Lent

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