For Your Own Good....and the Good of Others

1 Kings 19:4-8
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."

Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."
He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again.

The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

25 years ago antibiotics came with the instructions: One dose every 8 hours. The doctor emphasized the need to adhere to the schedule...even if it meant waking up my sleeping child to give them their dose of medicine...for their own good. I hated that process. It seemed unkind, especially when they were sick with an earache or sore throat, to rouse them from a deep sleep "for their own good".

Sometimes when what we want most is sleep, what the Lord provides is a wake up call to get up and eat and drink....for our own good...for the journey which lies ahead. We want to settle down into repose. Perhaps we are physically exhausted. Perhaps we have literally gone as far was we can with this or that endeavor...and we want a "time out". And then something stirs us (could it be the touch of an angel?) and we know that we need to get up....eat and drink!

It's about so much more than filling our stomach, though... when it comes to the path God calls us to walk, all that we need for sustenance is lavished upon us through Christ. It feels like compelling love. It may taste like comfort...or wisdom...or perspective and focus. It looks like direction...even in the wilderness of the unknown or surprising turns of each day.

Have you been roused awake recently? Did you get up, eat and drink deeply of God's love....or did you turn over and try to go back to sleep?