Words of Welcome

Exodus 16:2-15 When you are hungry, a good meal is always welcomed.  It doesn’t have to be fancy.  It just has to be filling.   I remember back to my early days living in the Pasadena YMCA.  I didn’t have a lot of money, so I lived on a daily ration of a micro-waved frozen poor boy sandwich and cupful of imitation kool-aid.  I kept the poor boys and the gallon jug in the little fridge at the bookstore where I worked.  You can imagine how I felt when Peggy, the store’s assistant manager, would invite me home for a meal and the opportunity to wash my clothes.  It was like manna from heaven. As we continue our journey through the Exodus story, the thrill of freedom confronts the reality of hunger.  The people begin complaining – again –  “Did you bring us out here to the desert to starve to death?”  If only we’d stayed back in Egypt where we could enjoy the “fleshpots of Egypt.” Yes, perhaps slavery is better than starvati...

1 Kings 17:8-16 I may have already told you the story of my time at the Pasadena YMCA. It wasn’t the most pleasant of times, and it was the one time in my life when I wasn’t always sure where my next meal would come from. I did lose weight on my "one-meal-a-day" diet, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Still there never was a point in my life where I thought I was really in danger of starving to death, and my experience was nothing compared to what so many in the world go through every day. Back when I was a kid, moms and dads would prod us to eat our spinach or lima beans, or maybe the brussels sprouts, by telling us that starving children living in China or Africa who’d love to eat that wonderful vegetable sitting untouched on our plates and growing ever colder by the minute. Like most children, I would say: "Then let them have it!" I mean, if they wanted it, they could have it. I might feel sorry for them, but that wasn’t going to get me to eat the benighted vegetable....