Open your mouth wide

But God would feed us  August 11, 2022

Psalm 81:8-16 Listen to me, O my people, while I give you stern warnings. Oh, if you would only listen to me! . . . Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen . . . But I would feed you with the finest wheat. I would satisfy you with wild honey from the rock.”

This morning I made French toast with yogurt and strawberries, scrambled eggs, and sausage for my husband for breakfast. A way of making up, I suppose, for the week of dry cereal he just had while I traveled to Idaho to visit my sister Marsha and her husband Vance. Of course, if he wished, he could learn to cook! But he has too many other irons in his fire.

While I was making breakfast, I thought about this blog. Some days are French toast days. Some are cold cereal days, when other priorities of life must take precedence. Today, I think, is a cold cereal day, because I’m preoccupied with completing the manuscript for Treasure Hunt 1904. Next Monday the 15th is the deadline for turning it in to the publisher. Four days! Yikes!!

But I do want to honor the Lord today. As I prayed about my trip to Idaho, he gave me this Scripture from Psalm 81, which made me think of baby birds in a nest, trustfully opening their beaks to receive what their mother would bring them.

I wanted to be one who listened, who paid trustful attention to what the Lord was doing in Idaho and in my life and the intersection of the two for a week. I traveled with a sense of curiosity and anticipation.

Some of what God did, I expected. Like the peace and the warm welcome I feel in Vance and Marsha’s home. Their kindness and generosity. Their joy in living one day at a time despite challenging circumstances.

But God filled my mouth with surprises, too. I will treasure forever my sister’s beautiful voice soaring in worship. A dancing fountain became for me an image of the Holy Spirit’s delight in delighting us. I was able to see beauty in the desert this time I had not been able to appreciate on other visits to Idaho. Vance had given me a book to read called Desert Spirituality and Cultural Resistance by Belden C. Lane which nurtured new concepts for me about the hard times in our lives. It challenges me to pay attention, to listen, to watch for the ways our Father draws close to us when we are not distracted by all our stuff and our own “important and urgent” work. To pay more attention to his voice than to having a voice of my own—though of course, the two are intertwined.

Opening my mouth wide is not just for travel to the high desert of Idaho. It’s for Pittsburgh too.