April 19th, 2012
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Bread and Light

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Opening Prayer

Everlasting God, may the light of Your holiness and love expose any sinful ways that I am comfortable with.

Read Exodus 25:23-40

[23] “Make a table of acacia wood-two cubits long, a cubit wide and a cubit and a half high. [24] Overlay it with pure gold and make a gold molding around it. [25] Also make around it a rim a handbreadth wide and put a gold molding on the rim. [26] Make four gold rings for the table and fasten them to the four corners, where the four legs are. [27] The rings are to be close to the rim to hold the poles used in carrying the table. [28] Make the poles of acacia wood, overlay them with gold and carry the table with them. [29] And make its plates and dishes of pure gold, as well as its pitchers and bowls for the pouring out of offerings. [30] Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times. [31] “Make a lampstand of pure gold and hammer it out, base and shaft; its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms shall be of one piece with it. [32] Six branches are to extend from the sides of the lampstand-three on one side and three on the other. [33] Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms are to be on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand. [34] And on the lampstand there are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms. [35] One bud shall be under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair, and a third bud under the third pair-six branches in all. [36] The buds and branches shall all be of one piece with the lampstand, hammered out of pure gold. [37] “Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it. [38] Its wick trimmers and trays are to be of pure gold. [39] A talent of pure gold is to be used for the lampstand and all these accessories. [40] See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Meditate

“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but thou art mighty; hold me with thy powerful hand” (W. Williams, 1717-91).

Think Further

A curtain hid the most holy place, shielding the ark and atonement cover, but God ordained that powerful and abiding symbols, bread and light, be placed in front of it. The Hebrew slaves had known not just physical hunger but spiritual hunger. Slave-masters keep the slaves emotionally and spiritually starved, ensuring that overwork denies them time and energy for organized symbolic life, and that poverty and oppression so weigh them down that they are bled of hope. They had eaten the “bread of affliction” (Deut. 16:3). How powerful a symbol, then, is the bread of the presence, the invitation to offer bread to God and to eat in God’s presence, the promise of abundant nourishment today and forever! How significant the symbolism of bread was to Jesus’ ministry! Little wonder he ordained its use as an enduring, tangible sign of his death and rising. This is the bread that Pharaoh could not give, the bread that the world cannot give. It is “indeed right and our bounden duty” (Holy Communion, Book of Common Prayer) that we should remember Jesus in actual bread, bread that is seen, blessed, broken and distributed. It is enough for us, and more.

Light is a universally powerful image. We know the fear of darkness and we know the comfort of light. But there are places of worse darkness, places of the internal darkness of pain, fear, despair, enslavement and hatred. The lampstand looks back to the God who drove darkness away to defeat the forces of chaos, and forward to Jesus, the light of the world, in whose light there is no terrifying lostness, no fear of the power of death. The psalmist knew it: “They feast on the abundance of your house … in your light we see light” (Psa. 36:8,9).

Apply

Ponder how you are fed and ‘enlightened’ by Jesus. Pray for any further feeding or light that you may need from him.

Closing prayer

Lord, how grateful I am to be nourished spiritually by You, the Bread of Life. May I feed on You more and more each day.

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