Dependence Day

It's amazing how readily available food is in the United States. Whenever I'm hungry, I can just walk over to my cupboards and can usually pull something out. If I'm out of food in my cupboards, I then have a couple options. I can hop in my car and go through a nearby drive-thru to get my snack fix. If I don't want to do that, I can drive to a grocery store and buy what I need to restock my cupboards. The grocery store Kroger is headquartered here in Cincinnati, and there are at least four Kroger stores within five miles of my apartment. Or, if I'm feeling especially lazy, I can call up any one of the multitude of pizza places in the area, and they'll bring it right to my door. (I always hope that the delivery pizza will be an attractive woman who has time to share my pizza with me while watching episodes of Community, but it always ends up being some college-aged dude who smells like mushrooms. It's a similar situation when I think about who might be in the seat next to me when I go to baseball games or get on an airplane.)

This morning I read about how the Israelites got their food while they were traveling to the Promised Land in Exodus 16. There weren't any Kroger stores on the road through Sinai, and it was a little too far for Pizza Hut to deliver. So when the Israelites began to grumble about not having anything to eat, God himself stepped in and provided. Every morning when the people woke up in their tents and stepped outside to stretch their legs, they found the ground covered with bread. Each person would take what their family needed for that day, and then the next morning God would provide again.

The Israelites were completely dependent on God for their sustenance while in the wilderness. They didn't plant crops at the foot of Mt. Sinai, going out to water them and....mulch them, or whatever people do to make things grow. They only had to trust that God would take care of them. Rather than working for their food, they only needed to receive it as a gift from God.

In Matthew 19:13-15, people start to bring their little children to Jesus so that he can bless them. The disciples decide it's a good time to act like Jesus' bodyguards, so they start to shoo away these parents and their kids. But then Jesus reprimands the disciples and welcomes the children to himself, saying, "For to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus expects his followers to be like little children in some way. I suppose there are numerous understandings that a person could have about what exactly Jesus means in this passage, and perhaps his intention isn't meant to be narrowed down to one specific quality. Children can represent innocence. They can represent trust. They can represent wetting the bed and watching cartoons all Saturday morning. But I think that one of the most important qualities of children that Jesus may be pointing to in this passage is that of dependence. A child is unable to adequately care for himself; he is dependent on the provision of his parents.

As an adult, I have several ways to "help myself" when I get hungry, as I have already mentioned. But when I was a little kid, my options were limited. I had to ask my mom for something to eat, and it was because of her care and love for me that she would provide for me. My responsibility as a child wasn't to get in the kitchen and whip up something for myself. It was to receive what was given to me.

The Christian life is a life of dependence. The Israelites needed to depend on God to take care of them in the desert, and we need to depend on God to provide our needs. Being a Christian is about recognizing your need and your ineptitude and receiving what God gives you. It's about understanding that you don't have the power to save yourself but that you need to be saved by another.

In our country, independence is perhaps the most emphasized characteristic of what it means to be a fulfilled person. This doesn't just apply to how we understand ourselves as a nation, but also how we live as individuals. We want to control our own destinies. We want to earn we we get. We'll say, "Man, what do I look like a charity case? I don't need your handouts. I'm an adult!" Because in our minds, that's what adulthood looks like--a lack of reliance on others. Maturity means to be financially, socially, and spiritually independent.

But in Jesus' way of looking at things, true maturity is to recognize your dependence. It's to see that you need a Savior, you need a Provider, you need a Father. It's to recognize with Paul in Romans 7, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And then it's to see that God has already taken care of it, and that all we need to do is receive it.