“I have had enough, Lord,” he (Elijah) said. “Take my life, I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under a bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by the food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. (I Kings 19:4-9).

On our journey through Lent, it is well to contemplate our own mortality. Elijah feared for his life and asked God to let him die, a prayer that God denied, as Elijah is one of only two in the Bible who, in fact, never died. (2 Kings2:11).

As the Israelites walked forty years in the strength of the manna that God supplied, so Elijah walked forty days in the strength of the bread and water supplied by the angel.

As we walk through Lent we go in the strength of the “bread of life” that came from God to us in Jesus. It’s true for every one of us that we could not make the journey without it, for as the angel said, “ Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” It is indeed too much for us to reconcile a world full of contradictions, denials, and separations. It’s too much for us to seek vainly for peace within ourselves.

There is only one peace that passes understanding, (Philippians 4:7), and it comes as food to our spirits: Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (Jesus of Nazareth, John 6:35).

We are well into our forty days of Lent; there is nothing preventing us from tasting the food of our God in scripture throughout the rest of the time, and afterward as well. The forty days are a gift of time; the food is a gift of eternity. During Lent we have only to remember that the journey is too much for us without the food.

Love in Him,

Prue