The Girl (and her lunch)

I can not tell you how many times in our years of raising a big family I fell back on the example of Jesus and His disciples feeding 5000 with a boys lunch. Making a little bit into much because God is in it. I wonder sometimes, if the boy's mom packed with the thought that her son might be sharing. I wonder how big the loaves and fishes were and what he carried them in..

 Many mom's apparently make sandwiches ahead, as in the night before the next school day. And some even make enough ahead to freeze and pull them out as needed. I never trusted the bread to not get soggy so didn't try that inspite of the fact that their kids did not complain that theirs were soggy. My approach was the morning line up. Generally I was making six lunches each morning and had a system to this while remembering who liked mayo, who hated it ect and hopefully getting the right sandwich into the right bag. We also relied on the tried and true PB and J.

So now at the tail end of school lunch years, with most of our kids grown and out of the house, I no longer have the line up. I am making one school lunch on a school day. Generally I have always overpacked for this particular one. She never ate much while at school as a gradeschooler but would eat most of what was left on the way home when her appetite returned. School was somewhat stressful as far as she was concerned and she did not want to eat while she was there much to the concern of teachers and lunchroom monitors.

Evidently these days, this year, she shares her lunch with fellow hungry high school students. She makes sure to eat something too, in case you are concerned for her. Since I learned of this sharing, I pack a bit differently. I pack with this in mind. She normally still has something left to eat on the way home but not always, which is ok because she can eat when we get home anyway.

One day heading home after school she was pulling something out from her bag and told me she was given banana bread from a student that day so actually had several things still to choose from. We were stopped at a traffic light and could see several car lengths ahead a man with a sign at the side of the road. I am not sure exactly what all it said but it is an uncomfortable, familiar sight. Things were happening quickly since the light changed but she suddenly said "I have food. I could give him my lunch." We passed him by. I looked at her and said "I can turn around".

Frankly I was low on gas and still had another student (who had fallen into an after school power nap in the car oblivious to all of this transpiring) to take home as well. Finding a place to turn around in the stretch ahead would be an inconvenience and my mind wanted to figure out whether he was telling the truth on his sign. But we were giving food not money. And my daughter was giving her lunch to Jesus since He said "when you do it to the least of these you do it unto Me" You know, a cup of cold water in His name. Feeding the hungry. Visiting the sick. Those in prison. Loving the unlovely, seemingly least important ones, like He loved me when I didn't deserve it. From Matthew 25:34-40

We were trying to figure out how to manuver so it could be me handing the lunch out, not my daughter (we have seen too many/heard too many things that make us stranger leary) but when it came down to it, when we could finally get turned around and then turned around again it had to be her handing the lunch through her window. And he did seem grateful. And we were glad too.

Did he really have the kids at home like his sign said? If so, did one get the applesauce, another the cookies? Did they split the sandwich and banana bread? I don't know. Or was it the first meal this man had in a day? Maybe. Maybe not. But Jesus knows and we are leaving that with Him.

Proverbs 22:9  A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.

Just as a PS. Several weeks after all this, I was at school (I am attending Charis Bible College) one of the ladies also attending held up a large jar of Welches Grape Jam.

She asked me "Do you have a bunch of kids?"  "I do but they are all pretty much grown now...Is that grape jam? That is my daughters favorite. She loves jam rather than jelly"

"Take it for her." Isn't that just how God is? He knows and provides our FAVORITE..

I was able to say to my daughter that day as I handed it over "Jesus loves you Lily" :)

Blessings!

Playing Hide and Seek (with God)

Right away I want to look into this locked box! I want to go to Secret Hiding Places.com and check it out. Tell the truth. Didn't you LOVE playing Hide and Seek when you were younger? Maybe you still, on occasion, get a kick out of waiting for your husband, wife or one of your kids to pass by the doorway where you are hiding so you can jump out and startle them silly. All in fun. Of course! Just choose your timing carefully. No one carrying hot coffee or precious cargo or anything.

One of the first comments our kids screamed to each other the first time we brought them to the house we were buying almost 18 years ago was "This will be great for Hide and Seek!" And they were off hiding and seeking. Should the fact that a place is great for hide and seek be a selling/purchasing factor? I would say it is worth considering when the family has going on 7 children, then growing to be 8. The house we were moving from had the MOST awesome rope swing ever, over a dry gully, that sold me when I watched my kids swing out far and wide as we were checking out homes for ownership. (When we had settled in Rope Swing house I would give it a swing myself while they napped and I was between pregnancies).ANYWAY.....

This morning I opened to page 1003 in my Bible. Ok. It was a morning of reading where I opened, because where I opened grabbed my attention. On page 1003 in my Bible is part of Psalm 139 along with side notes for referrence and then a section on Birth Control and being Stewards of Procreation. So anyway I stopped there. The part of the scripture that held me was this:

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?


If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.


If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,


Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.


If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,"
Even the night shall be light about me;


Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day,
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
Psalm 139: 7-12

That got me thinking. No matter where I might go, no matter where I might think I am hidden from God, I am not. No matter how dark my circumstances may seem, they do not hide me from Him and His hand to lead me out. His hand to hold me. Even if I may have messed up and want to hide from Him, He is the One who is the Good Shepherd Who will leave the flock to find the one lost sheep...

Are there days you just want to hide from life? Well maybe not for some of you but I know I have.
But what kinds of places do we hide in? Shopping. Drugs (legal or not). Poor relationship choices. Hobbies. Work. Alcohol. Food. Bed. The problem with those hiding places is they have the potential to turn in to places that trap us. Hang on there a minute. Let me be clear. If you are prescribed a med you need, use it, just don't misuse it. The ones not prescribed are illegal so do not even go there. I could expound on each of the listed hiding places but for the sake of space and wanting to keep blogs brief enough just to jolt something awake in us like a quick espresso I won't.

The flip side of all this is that we can hide ourselves in Him. (do you see it? The I in HIM?) Psalm 32:7 tells us:
You are our hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble,
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance    Selah

Psalm 91 also tells us:
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.