Where to find food

Nearly every nature documentary has a scene in which mama takes her babies out of the den in the spring and teaches them how to find food. There they go, across the tundra or desert or mountain (whatever the case may be), in search of food. When the babies are little, mama hunts for them while they toddle along by her side. Then they happily dig in when she’s successfully landed a meal, trying out their little teeth and jaws, filling their bellies with good food. Usually the meal ends in the little ones tumbling over each other in play. Life is good. Mama licks her paws.

But the purpose of this entertaining and delicious lesson is that the babies will one day be able to hunt their own food, and ultimately to train their own babies to find food .

The other day, in a moment of rare mental clarity, I realized that I was teaching my children the very same thing. We weren’t at the grocery store, or in the garden. We were at the table discussing the word of God. Their Bibles were open. They were digging in, trying out their little minds, exercising their spiritual jaws, filling their souls with the nourishment of Scripture that I had put in front of them. Life is good.

My purpose as a parent is the same as that of the mama polar bear, the mama lion, the mama wolf. We want to show our children where to find food. Really, all education boils down to this goal. Even the purpose of secular education is to find food. In our prosperity and sophistication it’s very easy to forget that the most basic human need is food and water. If an educated person doesn’t have these things, what good was his education at all?

The believer knows this as well as the next guy, and we want to train our children with skills that will equip them to earn money to buy food and homes to provide their own families with the basic things of life. But the believer knows more than just that. The believer knows that there is bread beyond bread and water beyond water. There is the bread of life, Jesus himself, which satisfies eternally. And there is living water, the Holy Spirit, which springs from within and leads to eternal life (John 6:35, John 4:10-15, John 7:38-39). Where can our children find this food?

They must learn to find it, just as they must learn to earn money to buy food from the store. They must learn where to find it and how to devour it. They must learn how good it tastes, how it strengthens them and enlivens them, and how it satisfies. They must learn to recognize when they are hungry, and must be trained not to sit in their dens and starve, but to go out and feed themselves. They must learn how to train others to get it. These are the lessons of a biblical education.

Yes, our children must learn to feed their families physically, but we must never lose sight of the fact that the physical things of this world are given to reveal the deep invisible realities of the spiritual realm (Romans 1:20). This in fact is the principle behind fasting. If you allow your body to go hungry, you can be reminded of the spiritual reality that you are hungry in your soul. Fasting is a discipline which drives us to feed ourselves spiritually. The body teaches us about the spirit.

Your times in the Word with your children are at the very heart of their education. These are the times when you are showing them where to find food when they find themselves hungry for God, empty of his joy, starved for his presence, weak from need of food. How many highly educated adults are out there, striving day after day for the food that satisfies only for an hour or two and then is gone? How many of them are starving in their souls? Do they know where to find food? Has their education prepared them to get what they need for themselves and their families? Or will they die?