One of my favorite parts about reading Scripture is seeing the connection between the New Testament and the Old. Everything that happens in the New Testament comes alive and holds even greater meaning when you understand all the history and promises behind it. That is particularly true about Christ’s death and the last supper he has with his disciples. Jesus is reclining at the table with his apostles, breaks bread, and then gives them wine and says in Matthew 26:28 “For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Friends, this is the gospel story that started in the beginning of time, continued through Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and finds its fulfillment in Jesus. What Jesus is claiming in this statement brings all of Scripture together.

In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham in which Abraham cuts animals in half, is put into a death-like sleep, and God’s presence passes through the divided animals, promising to give Abraham land and countless offspring. A few centuries later, God makes a covenant with Abraham’s offspring at Mount Sinai, as seen in Exodus 19-24. God tells the Israelites that if they keep the commands he lays out for them they will be God’s “own possession out of all the peoples…kingdom of priests and…holy nation.” The Israelites promise to obey all that God commands. Just like with Abraham, this covenant must be inaugurated with blood. Moses sacrifices bulls and splatters their blood on the people and says “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you.” Now, if the Israelites follow the laws of the Lord, they will be his people. The covenant has been put in place and ensured with blood.

Over Christmas, I read the historical fantasy novel Babel by RF Kuang. In it, a young boy is removed from his home in Canton, China and taken to London after his family died in a plague. Kuang describes how he was feeling as: “The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.” This depiction stopped me in my tracks because it so intimately portrayed what it felt like to lose my husband. Kuang is right in this sense that the word loss does not even begin to cover what happens when you lose the closest person to you, someone who was connected to every aspect of your life. It is a “severance,” an “un-anchoring.” For months I felt unmoored. If I am being honest with myself, still today, over three years later, I can still feel unmoored. My house is different without his presence, my car stays dirty longer because he was always the clean one, there is no longer a parenting partner to tap in when my patience has run dry. I don’t have someone to ask if the outfit looks good or someone else to enjoy my cooking. A bottle of wine takes much longer to finish and all of a sudden I had to figure out how to be the fun parent. I do not think I have seen more than five movies in the last three years because he always loved movies more than I did. I can go entire evenings without speaking out loud. I still find myself reaching for my phone to text him something I find funny.

The sufferings of this life can make us feel as if we are under curses rather than blessings. We feel like we are in exile, waiting for the future hope God had promised. We feel the weight of the brokenness of the world, as I am sure the exiles tangibly did. They had seen their friends and family die by sword and famine, they had watched the places they loved be burned and torn apart. They walked among brokenness daily and they carried the weight of it. Unlike the exiles, much of our suffering is not due to our sin, but it reminds us of how broken our world is. We carry the weight of that moment death struck nearer than we ever wanted it to. We carry the weight of the pain of our children. We carry the weight of the doctors who made a mistake, or the driver who did not follow the law, or the depression or addiction that sunk so deep. We have heavy yokes to carry.

We feel like we are in exile as loneliness scars our hearts and loss makes us feel homeless. We look around us and cannot help but wonder if we are the only ones who have experienced this much pain. We wonder if anyone will ever understand us again. We wonder if part of us will always be alone even when we’re standing in a group of people.

I started reading Ezekiel this morning and came across a verse that broke my heart. At this point in the story of Scripture, much of Israel is in exile in Babylon, including Ezekiel. The fall of Jerusalem has not quite happened but will happen during Ezekiel’s writing. In the beginning of Ezekiel’s story, God is calling Ezekiel to speak God’s words to Israel, to prophesy about what is to happen. In 4:16-17, God says to Ezekiel “Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They will anxiously eat food they have weighed out and in dread drink rationed water for lack of bread and water. Everyone will be devastated and waste away because of their iniquity.” Because of Israel’s sin, God is going to stop the supply of bread, leaving his people hungry and dying.

This is clearly a dismal position for the Israelites, but my heart breaks mostly because it is a clear representation of how Israel’s relationship with God has broken. In the beginning of Israel as a family and then a nation, God tangibly provided bread for his people. Genesis tells us that God sent Jacob’s son Joseph to Egypt to prepare the land for the upcoming famine. By having a family member there, Jacob and his seventy descendants (the beginnings of Israel) can move to Egypt and have the food they need. Some generations later, God uses Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and slavery. On the way to Mount Sinai, the Israelites grow thirsty and hungry. God provides water from a rock (Exodus 17) and a bread-like substance called manna from the dew (Exodus 16). This is the relationship Israel once had with the Lord their God- one where they were needy, but he was close and provision complete.

Every once in a while I will read a verse with a phrase I cannot get out of my head. A phrase that opens my eyes to something about the Lord that I had not thought about much before. This week that phrase is “leftovers.” If you’re a parent, this word is usually associated with groans from your children or possibly a hunt through the pantry to find some way to make the excess food taste new. For me, there’s also a feeling of relief when I realize I have leftovers, a break from meal planning and cooking. In Scripture, leftovers means the same thing: the extra food not eaten after a meal; which seems not particularly spiritual or helpful. I do not think that is true, though. In fact, for me, it touched the part of my heart where the things that are hard to believe about God live.

I am writing today more than a little exhausted. We arrived home two days ago after being away from home for the better part of three weeks. That day I had gotten three girls on an airplane, managed to not lose any of them for a couple of hours in our second of three airports, onto a second airplane, onto a shuttle and finally into our car. We arrived home and in the midst of unpacking multiple suitcases my eight-year-old daughter started to freak out. “There are bugs on me! They’re so itchy!” I was expecting to find her being dramatic, but she was reacting reasonably. She was covered in fleas. Soon, all four of us began noticing tiny black bugs hopping on our feet. Someone came to do a few things in our home while we were gone and found out later that the dog they had brought with them had fleas. I have spent the last 48 hours on the phone with pest control, searching for flea carpet spray, using said spray multiple times, and doing over ten loads of laundry. And tomorrow? That eight year old turns nine, so there is a cake to bake, presents to wrap, decorations to display, and a party to host. All of this on my own, no spouse to share the load. I am tired, I am weary, I am overwhelmed. I am not alone.

Rest is a common topic in the Bible. I have been thinking about it a lot lately, even before this weekend, as I read through Israel’s journey to becoming a nation and then its subsequent years as a kingdom. Over and over again the Biblical authors talk about Israel having rest on all sides. The Hebrew word used in many of these instances is ”nûah,” and is simply translated as “rest.” Nûah is used in the Old Testament at least eight times as a promise and at least ten times as a fulfillment of that promise. It is used in the giving of the ten commandments in Exodus to describe what God did on the seventh day of creation and in Deuteronomy’s account of the commandments to explain that by the Israelites resting on Sabbath, their slaves “may rest as you do.” In Deuteronomy and Joshua the Lord promises to give Israel rest. Then, in the historical books of the kings, God promises to give Israel rest from their enemies through leaders like David and Solomon. As we continue through Israel’s story we see the fulfillment of God’s promised rest as the reigns of Asa and Jehosaphat are described as “the LORD gave them rest on every side.”

My daughters and I are currently reading the 5th or 6th (depending on what order you read them in) installment of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia Series: The Silver Chair. A few nights ago, we read a scene that just about wrecked me because it was Scripture coming to life in this piece of fiction, as I am sure Lewis intended. A new character, Jill, is in the other world where Narnia resides for the first time and has been wandering in the woods for hours when she finally hears running water. As she approaches the stream, there is a lion (who we the reader understands to represent Jesus) blocking her way. Jill becomes so thirsty looking at the stream that she thinks drinking water would be worth getting eaten by the lion. Then, the lion speaks: “If you are thirsty, come and drink.” When she doesn’t come, the lion asks if she is thirsty and Jill responds, “I’m dying of thirst.” “’Then drink,’ said the Lion.”

We are Jill. We are thirsty, sometimes palpably so. The world promises to quench our thirst in so many ways. If we just achieve enough, make enough money, have good enough friends, find a romantic partner, then we will be satisfied. Maybe you are thirsty for the deeper desires of your heart: comfort or health or companionship. Or maybe you are like me, walking through life post some traumatic event or catastrophic loss. I am thirsty for a previous life, for a person I cannot have again. I am thirsty for a life that doesn’t continually feel like just putting one foot in front of the other to get through the day. I am thirsty for a life that is more than the fallout of tragedy. Perhaps you are even thirsty for hope again, for trust in the God you thought you knew. For God to show up in a new way, for you to feel like he is actually with you, for you to have more of God during a time when you have nothing else. We are thirsty, friends, and the Bible shows us we are not alone.