Longing for Leeks

If you've lived long enough to know someone that grew up in church then you've probably heard it said at one time or another, "If the church doors were open, I was there."

That pretty much sums up my entire life.

I had the great blessing of growing up under parents who diligently served the Lord.  My father is a pastor and preacher, my mother taught Sunday School, sung in the choir, and planted many church ministries. The parsonage was where we slept, the church was where we lived.

I can remember, as a very young child growing up under the shadow of those Eastern Kentucky mountains, on weekdays I would slip unnoticed though the empty halls of the church building into the empty sanctuary.  I would slip in and out of the pews seen only by the occasional rays of sunshine streaming in through the stained glass windows.

On Sundays the sanctuary was bursting with excitement.  Music resounded, baptismal waters splashed, and sermons were preached with such conviction that I have, quite literally, seen grown men run down the aisle and fall prostrate on the altar.  Y

You did not have to be a biblical scholar to recognize the Spirit of the Lord moving.
On Sunday's God spoke.  He spoke in great claps of thunder and tidal waves and whirlwinds.

But on any typical weekday morning the Sanctuary was still.  The business of the church had moved into the offices and the hallways and the Sanctuary was still.  Even as a child I could recognize that the stillness of that room did not mean it was empty.  And while I did not know exactly what I was feeling I knew that what I found in that empty sanctuary was peaceful and beautiful and my heart longed for it.

As I grew, the sanctuaries grew.  No longer was I surrounded by the mountains of Eastern Kentucky but planted in the fertile pasturelands of North Carolina.  The fields were ripe and eager to be harvested.  I wasn't watching ministry from the sidelines anymore, God had called me to ministry of my own.

As the church grew, the noise got louder.  Sermons were preached, not once on Sunday mornings, but three, four, five times.  The piano and organ were now a full orchestra with over 300 people in the choir.  The baptism waters were never quiet.  Sunday school classes ran more in attendance than some churches.  God was choosing to pour out his Spirit and allowing us to have a small part in it.

And I found myself longing more for that empty sanctuary.  I would slip in on a Saturday afternoon and linger until the maintenance guys needed to lock the doors.  I would come early on Sunday afternoon to steal a few quiet moments before the evening service started.

Now I knew what it was that was drawing me there.  It was the same thing that caused Moses to take his eyes off of his flock and gaze into a burning bush.  It was the Spirit of the Lord.   In those holy moments that took place on holy ground I would converse with my Maker.  A creature before her Creator, drinking Living Water, tasting the Bread of Life and seeing that it was good.  Each time I walked out of the sanctuary I would find myself longing for our next meeting in the tabernacle.
But just like Moses learned in Horeb sometimes God asks us to put our shoes back on and take a walk. Though our hearts long to stay before that bush at Horeb God leads us out of Midian,  quick stop off in  Egypt and straight into the wilderness.

Maybe God gently called and you stepped out in faith and followed or maybe Pharaoh called you in by night and said, "Go."  Take your kids, take your flocks, take your friends, just be gone. (loose paraphrase of Genesis 12:31)  Either way you've found yourself in the wilderness far from your tabernacle and you find yourself longing for the leeks of Egypt.

Recently, and quite by accident I found myself back in the sanctuary that I grew up in.  It was quiet, not a creature was stirring.  I awkwardly slipped into a pew and sat in silence.  In the noise of my Exodus I had not allowed myself very many moments of silent reflection and I did not happen upon this moment, in as much as it happened upon me.  As I sat in that sanctuary I did the very thing that caused Lot's wife to turn from a healthy young woman into a dehydrated and bitter preservative--I looked back.

For a moment I remembered.  I looked ahead and saw the altar, not as it was now but how it exists in my memory.  Covered in souls weeping for the lost.  I remembered the baptistry where week in and week out souls were raised to walk in newness of life--not the least of which include my brother, my sister, my sons, and my precious nieces.   I remembered standing at the back of that sanctuary dressed in white looking peeping through the back door anxiously waiting for the organ to play, "Here Comes the Bride."  I remember the day my sons made the decision to walk the aisle and pass from an eternity of death into life with Christ.  The memories started to flood over me like the salty walls of that great Red Sea pouring down on the Egyptian army.

This is a most dangerous practice in your work for the Kingdom of God.  In Christ's work we can move in many directions but never backward.   The Bible is very clear that looking back is a dangerous practice.

After the Children of Israel left Egypt and had been traveling in the wilderness for some time they began to look back.  I want to point out that through plagues and with great miracles they had been delivered from slavery into the wilderness.  While in the wilderness God had given them food, water and protection around the clock.  But after some time they took their eyes off of "their daily bread" and they decided to look back.

Exodus 11:4 tells us that, "the rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, "If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.  But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"

It has been said that the reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was and the present worse than it is.

The Bible tells us that in Egypt the Hebrews were greatly oppressed.  They were slaves to the Egyptians who worked them ruthlessly.  They made their lives bitter with harsh labor.  And now they are sitting around waxing eloquent about how great the food was.

They were beaten.  Their hands were bloody from laying brick, their backs bent from gathering straw, their skin burnt from working the fields.  Their babies were born and thrown into the Nile river and we find them sitting around missing melons and longing for leeks.

It sounds ridiculous but how many times do we find ourselves on the same merry-go-round.  Every day spinning in circles afraid to move forward because we'd rather spend our time wailing about what once was.

You can not hold hands with your past and move forward.  Jesus said in Luke 9:62, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

Choosing to look back is, in effect, choosing to turn your back on your present.  That creates confusion.
Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, "Do not say, "Why were the former days better than these?"  For you do not inquire wisely concerning these things."

If you keep your eyes focused on the rear-view mirror you quickly lose site of what is in front of you.  In Philipians 3:13 Paul uses the image of a racer to drive home this message when he says,
 ". . .but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,"

It is encouragement to look ahead and a warning to stop looking back.

Lot's wife stopped and looked back.  It was not a glance back but an intent look, a longing.  And "as she stood there gazing behind her, precious time was irrevocably lost.  The destruction that filled the air and consumed her city swept in and smothered her.  "Salt was crusted round that living core, and she perished, because she wasted in trembling retrospect the flying moments which rightly used, would have set her in safety."  (A. Maclaren)

Don't waste the moments God has given you.  Don't lose today because you are caught up in the storm of what once was.  Turn your back on the past, the what-if's, the what once was-es, the what could have beens.  You are standing at the starting line of the greatest race you will ever run--your life.  Just like the racer, for the child of God there is only one direction:  Relentless forward motion.

Isaiah 43:18-19  "Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold I will do a new thing,  now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?  I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."