Daily Lesson for Monday, May 23

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Proverbs chapter 10 verse 3:

The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry,
but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.

There is a deep contentment in all that we have have and all that we are that can come only from a life found in God.  The one who knows the love and grace of God and responds to this love with love and grace in turn is deeply at peace with all things as they turn out.  This is what Paul -- writing from a death row prison cell - calls the "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) and the "secret of being content in all circumstances -- whether in plenty or in want," (Philippians 4:13).

For those who have not yet found this secret nothing is ever really enough. No accomplishment can ever really gratify, no experience can live up to billing.  No achievement can last the day and the night. There is always a deeper hunger and desire to be more than they are -- to live up to some unseen yet ever rising bar.  The end result of not being able to live up to that bar is frustration, bitterness, and a spirit of victimization. The soul who dies stuck in this place dies with a sense of the whole world having had it out for him.

Without doubt, much of the identity and class politics we see today on both the Left and Right plays on this deep sense of hunger and frustration. But the authentically spiritual person knows no politician or platform, no matter how promising, can satiate the deepest hunger we as human beings have. That can never come from bread alone.

After Jesus fed the 5,000 the people came once again to him. The Bible says they wanted to make them their King. But Jesus refused the Kingship and he refused to feed them also. As today's lesson says, he thwarted their craving.  He did so because He wanted them to see that no bread could satisfy their deepest hunger save spiritual bread -- or what Jesus called the Bread of Life.