Bread and Circuses

There is so much going on in the lives of my friends. There is so much to grieve over and so much to pray about: broken relationships, battered relationships, loss, exhaustion, health issues, back injuries, foot injuries, business struggles, job insecurities, financial battles, loneliness, anger, etc. It feels so overwhelming at times. I want life to work for me and for those I care about. It is hard some days to just get up and keep moving knowing the brokenness of the lives around me.

 A friend gave me the book, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, for my birthday and I have been slowly reading it. There is one prayer called, We are much drawn to circuses, that has struck me for some reason. 

The beginning of the prayer talks of our need for bread and for circuses. It goes on to speak of our desire and our imagined control over getting our need met, followed closely by a prayer to deliver us from our self-fulfilling ways.

He then calls us to thank God for His provision, and to plead with God to lessen our anxieties over our perceived need. All so that we can be liberated. I love these thoughts, they deeply move me.

The end of his prayer is humorous and touching, in fact it was the ending that pulled me in. He closes his prayer with, We pray in the name of Jesus who, as far as we know, never went to the circus. Amen.

I love it. Jesus is not about a grand production, He is about loving us well. It keeps coming back to being faithful, to trusting that God will provide what we need out of His love for us. There is such bondage trying to make life work and such freedom in being grateful for what He has given us. Thank God for His resurrection power! Easter is a comin’