Bread Making

Lately, my heart has been burdened with an earnest yearning for God’s Truth; there is a particular issue, which I’ve seen come up again and again in this world, whether on the news or on Facebook or wherever else, and it has caused some serious division among people (For this reason, I won’t say what it is so people don’t try to pull me into the argument as well), but I’ve seen it cause a lot of heartache, and I (being as empathetic as I am) feel the heartache myself hearing about this stuff and I've asked God for the answers we all need. I’ve heard what we human beings have had to say on both sides of the issue, but I for one am not convinced anyone has yet heard directly from God Himself; I am not interested in what man has to say, I want to know the mind of Jehovah.

Yesterday, as I was ‘bearing my cross’ working outside in the cold with beardcicles freezing onto my face, I meditated more on the Bible, and God met me there. He turned my attention to the scripture which says, ‘It is impossible for offenses not to come, but woe unto him through whom they come! It would be better for him that a millstone be hanged around his neck, and he was cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.’ This (Luke 17:1-2) was recorded in the gospels repeatedly. When God says something repeatedly, it’s because it’s important, and because He knows how thick-headed we can be, so take care to pay attention. The word ‘offense’ in this scripture is better translated as ‘stumbling block’ or ‘snare’ which is a reference to how we can impede each others walks with God.

But He called my attention to that millstone Jesus mentioned. Why a millstone? One can think of a lot of devices and methods one can use to drown a person in the sea; this seems oddly specific. It is strange, until you realize what you need a millstone for. It is a large stone a miller would use to grind wheat into flour which in turn is used to make bread; we all know this.

But remember the bread Jesus spoke of to his disciples, ‘this is my body which was broken for you. Eat ye all of it.’ He was talking about the bread of life, our spiritual bread, which most people simply think is equivalent with the scriptures in the Bible. Most people are also wrong; ink scrawled on the pages of a book can in no way give you spiritual life. You can learn the Bible inside and outside and upside down, and it still will produce nothing in you, unless God makes it real to you and it starts working in your real life.

How does this happen? Well, the very first thing that needs to happen is that the scripture needs to be gathered and then it needs to be changed into something that the Holy Spirit (symbolized by water) can seep into. Then it needs to be refined in the trials of an overcoming life (symbolized by fire, i.e. an oven or furnace). And THEN you have your bread of life.

The little bit that I left out there, you might have noticed, is the wheat and the millstone, which, at this point, should be rather easy to figure out. The wheat is the scriptures, and the millstone is the hard, weighty tedium of meditation. Many people nowadays misuse the word ‘meditation’ and think of bald guys sitting around chanting ‘ohm.’ This is not what it’s supposed to mean; the oldest and best translation is ‘reiteration’ which means you go over it again: you reread it, you remember it, you listen to it again, you make another written copy of it, you reanalyze it, you sing it, you go over it again and again and again until it has been transformed into something soft and easily handled: something the Spirit of God can really get into.

The admonition of this scripture, which connects the millstone (how you handle the scriptures) and impeding someone’s walk with God is not just about being careful with the way you treat people. It is really warning us against false religion: don’t be a part of that. One of the chief defining qualities of false religion is the way it handles (or rather mishandles), the Word of God, hence the millstone: if you mishandle the scriptures, you ought to die out there in the sea, and to take your millstone with you, because it’s just as useless.

With that in mind, I just want to encourage everybody to seriously meditate on the word of God, and to not simply take everything it has to say at face value, nor should you pick and choose what scriptures you want to use to make your ‘bread,’ but remember that Jesus said to eat all of it: grind it all to powder and use it.

Go with God and have a blessed day!