Food of Kings
By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president
Jesus daily offers us the bread of life.
When the recent thunderstorm rolled through our area, it reminded me of Kansas where I was born and raised. The lightning and thunder is quite a delightful thing to watch and brought back many good memories.
The down side of a strong storm is that trees fall and damage things, and flash floods can happen. In one storm, I remember a large tree branch fell in our yard. After the storm was over, my sister and I went to explore the yard and see the damage.
In among the branches of this very large part of the tree, we spotted four baby birds still in the nest. Our parents said to leave them alone until we see if the parents came back. They never did.
So we adopted the birds. That was quite an experience.
The baby birds were perpetually hungry it seemed. We were always preparing food for them. As soon as we were close to the little nest we prepared for them inside, they would start calling out and their mouths would automatically open.
All to soon it was time to release them back into the wild. But the wonderful memories remain of all that we learned from that experience
In the Bible we see a story where the tables were turned. 1 Kings 17 tells the story of Elijah by the brook hiding from the king during the drought. It says in verse 6 that the ravens brought him food twice a day. So here the birds are feeding the humans.
But what stands out to me from the text is that it says that the ravens brought him meat and bread. Twice a day. The Bible points this out because it was not the normal diet for a common person. It was more like the diet of a king to eat that way and have both meat and bread twice a day.
Elijah was in the desert by a stream with birds feeding him the diet of kings. It is encouraging to apply that to our lives today. We can be all alone in tough areas of life, but God can still give us spiritual food daily. We can eat at the King of King’s table! We can truly have that daily walk with God, depending on Him to bring us spiritual food each day.