Remembering God's Faithfulness

It's easy to forget how we're fed.

Van Gogh, Vincent. Wheat Field with Cypresses. 1889, The Met, New York City.

The disciples forgot to bring bread with them and didn’t know how they were going to find anything to eat.

The story is found in Matthew 16—one chapter after Jesus feeds the four thousand and two chapters after Jesus feeds the five thousand. In two chapters Jesus feeds well over nine thousand people, but—one chapter later—the disciples are wondering how they are supposed to eat with no bread.

So Jesus says this:

“O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?  Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?” (Matthew 16:8-10).

What gets me is that the disciples had just experienced bread coming out of nowhere—not once but twice. And yet they still panicked when they forgot the bread.

Sometimes I can be pretty outdoorsy. Like hiking and climbing and chasing waterfalls and stuff. When I hike, I hate hiking on wide paths. It just feels wrong to me, to have a wide path telling you where to go in nature. Nature was meant to be explored, you know?

So my favorite paths are the ones that hardly anyone knows about. They cross boulders and streams and sometimes seem impossible.

On these trails, every couple hundred feet, there are these stacks of rocks, one on top of another, usually five high. They look like the towers I made as a kid with whatever was near me.

They stand out in the forests because someone built them. Nature didn’t just accidentally stack up some rocks; someone put them there on purpose.

They’re called cairns and serve as trail markers. When the path isn’t easily paved, they stand out and let me know I’m still on the right trail.

There’s been quite a few times when I’ve gotten lost on the trail and have had to go back to the last cairn I saw. I hike back to that, reacquaint myself with my surroundings, and set out to find the next cairn.

Life isn’t usually a well-paved path. There’s undergrowth and large trees and boulders. Streams have to be stepped over and rivers have to be waded through. Sometimes we find the trail easily, walking to the next rock and finding the next tree.

Other times though, the traveling is hard. We become blinded by the sun and the vastness of the journey in front of us. The next step won’t always be obvious, and sometimes we get lost.

The good times, the times we’ve experienced the Lord’s hand in our lives in obvious ways, become forgotten amidst the fear of the unknown terrain. Nothing looks the same, and we feel trapped in our own heads, afraid to take a step.

We are out of bread and hungry. We do not remember the time God fed the five thousand in our life. We do not remember the baskets left over or the stomachs that are full. We only see our own empty hands.

It’s in this place that we must learn how to look back at the cairns in our lives—those moments when God’s voice breaks through and confirms we’re on the right path. We need to remember the goodness of God and his ability to provide for his children. Even when we are walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the cliffs arching above us, his rod and his staff will still comfort us.

There are cairns all around us, reminders of the faithfulness of God.

Sometimes we just have to backtrack and remember their locations.

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Maybe you’ll like this playlist?

I thought this might be a good moment to share my updated “Calm My Soul” playlist. I’m a sucker for a good, chill worship song (with some gospel music sprinkled in), so perhaps this can join you during prayer time or morning drives or anxious feelings. Rather than create a bunch of disparate playlists, I like updating the same one—trying to add 8-10 new songs each week; the new songs will always be at the beginning of the playlist, so it can be listened to straight through or shuffled.

• Spotify

• Apple Music

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