A Plate Full of Rocks

Well, it’s Lent. For those of you following the church calendar like me, that means it’s time to give stuff up (alcohol, chocolate, frivolous spending, Homestarrunner) and take up certain disciplines (almsgiving, prayer, being way nicer to your husband than you usually are). I joke, of course. Not everyone does Lent in the same way. If you don’t feel called to give up Homestarrunner.com, and you are still watching and rewatching those episodes, go for it. Also, we should hang out. I sometimes feel like I dreamed the whole thing up…

Lent is the season before Easter, and it lasts 40 days. This is to commemorate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before the beginning of his public ministry, and in that time he was fasting…he was also being tempted. 

Jesus, being Jesus, chooses to do everything right. He resisted temptation in every form, even though he had a human body that felt hunger, thirst, pain, headaches, faintness, and blisters. So when the devil tempts him, he starts with food… asking him, “If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Today we were talking to the kids in our Sunday School class about asking God for things. And, of course, there’s that great verse about, “Who among you, if your child asks for bread, will give him a stone?” My husband reminded them, “we can’t always tell the difference between bread and rocks.”

It’s childish, but it’s true. My little niece Ruthie is scooting around the floor now, and freaking us all out because she keeps looking like she’s eating crumbs. You can’t let your kids eat rocks—and they don’t always know what’s edible. My father loves to tell a similar story, about me as a toddler sobbing as if my heart would break because he wouldn’t let me stick my finger in the electrical outlet. 

As you get older, the things you feel a craving for are less and less material—we want a relationship with THIS person, we want THIS job, or THIS talent. We want security, but it has to take THIS form. We want a particular kind of happy life. 

Hindsight is always twenty/twenty, and I can think of a bunch of examples from my misspent youth. There were awards I didn’t win, and it was a good thing—I needed to work harder without getting a bunch of attention for it. There were friendships I pursued that would’ve been injurious. Then, of course, there were all the super-cool colleges I applied to, none of which were particularly interested in my meager accomplishments. 

Satan tempted Christ to turn a stone into bread. The barren landscape would’ve been filled with everything he needed. But that wasn’t God’s plan, and he submitted to his Father.

Thank God, when I asked for the bread I thought I wanted, he didn’t give it to me. It would’ve been as good to me as a rock. I didn’t need more attention in my youth. The friends God sent me were people who had everything I didn’t, and many of them are still in my life, speaking truth all the time. And thank God I didn’t end up anywhere but Gordon College—he used that place to change me for the better. And of course, that’s where my husband was. Thank God, he gives me good things, even when I don’t know what I’m asking for.