No Toast Without Bread: My Loving God Will Meet Me

Tuesday, Cindy offered to meet me at the doctor’s. Coming home from the doctor’s Wednesday, Traci called and a gift box of my favorite David bars from Kevin met me at the doorstep. Thursday Alicia offered to clean. Friday David hand delivered a bag of “the best collagen” for healing, and that night Kimi and Joe blessed us with dinner and dominoes.

Where has God been?

In those 14 days since I reruptured my Achilles tendon, I’ve waited for a surgeon as I’ve watched my tendon creep up my calf.

Where has my God been?

Silly question.

For if there had been no bread, there would be no toast.

Dire Straits

I’ll explain the toast bit in minute. But first let’s look at two verses I’d missed all the other times I’d read through the Psalms. Let me set up those verses in Psalm 59.

David’s situation? The elite soldiers of Israel are surrounding David’s house with King Saul’s order to kill him. (Read more here.) Terrifying!

My situation? The gap in my reruptured Achilles tendon widens as I await my second repair surgery in 12 weeks. (Read more here.) Discouraging.

Insert your terrifying or discouraging situation here: ____________________________________

As I await this second surgery, I’ve spent hours in the soul’s medicine chest. The Psalms have been a balm. This week, it was two verses in Psalm 59 that drew me in.

But among all the words in verses nine and ten, one word flashed.

My God Will Meet Me

That word was “meet.” As in, “My God in his steadfast love will meet me.”

“Meet” comes from the Hebrew verse transliterated, qāḏam, and translated variously into English as, 

a. to meet, confront; 

b. to go before, go in front; 

c. be beforehand, anticipate. 

As in, God will “meet us, go before us, and anticipate my needs.”

Derek Kidner, in his terrific commentary on Psalm 59:10 writes, 

“The word meet (59:10a) is vivid: It is based on the idea of what is ‘in front’ of someone, usually in the sense of confronting them by coming to meet them, as in the beautiful phrase of Psalm 21:3 [“you meet him with rich blessings”]. But it can alternatively imply going in front to lead the way. .. either sense would serve; what matters is that God, rather than the enemy, fills the foreground before David’s eyes.” 

That is it.

God, rather than the enemy—which could be difficult people or terrifying or discouraging circumstances—fills the brilliant foreground. We see our situation in the blurry background. 

God is not distant or aloof. I admit he’s felt that way now and then these past 14 days. 

But Psalm 59 assures me that in his mercy, his hesed, his committed love, is near.

My God in his steadfast love will meet me. 

God Anticipates Our Needs

It was true for David, it is true for me, and it will be true for you too. 

No matter our situations, the Lord meets meets his children. He anticipates our needs. He leads.

That’s where I land today, 14 days after my second disabling Achilles rupture in the past ten weeks. I choose to believe that God’s word is true, and that he, in his lovingkindness, will meet me. 

I choose to believe it and he has been meeting me. 

“How’s that?” you ask. 

Well, now, pop that toast!

“If There Is No Bread, There Will Be No Toast”

And God will meet you.

“How’s that?” you ask. “Just how exactly is God meeting you?”

Let’s let Jack answer.

Near the end of Mere Christianity, in Book IV, Chapter 7, entitled, “Let’s Pretend,” C.S. Lewis describes how Christ works within his children, to sanctify and conform them into his own image.

As a skilled writer, Lewis anticipates his readers’ challenge and directs his next words to those critics.

These critics would resemble us who would ask in a trial, “How has God met me?”

Here is his reply,

Some of you may feel that this is very unlike your own experience. You may say “I’ve never had the sense of being helped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other human beings.” That is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways: …He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences …

How God Meets Us

God uses means. We know his healing through the hands of surgeons. And we know his love through the love of friends.

“If there is no bread, there will be no toast.”

I don’t know if my Achilles tendon will heal this time, or if I will walk normally again.

But I do know that God anticipates my needs. 

I know my loving God meets me. 

“Had One of These Lately?”

Growing up, my aunt Gretchen would walk up to us kids—smile on her lips and glint in her eyes and ask,

“Had one of these lately?”

Then Aunt Gretchen would wrap this giggling niece up with a big old bear hug.

I could say that hug was just toast—that it was just another hug from silly aunt Gretchen.

Or I could say, and I will, that that hug and every other hug and kindness this week was my loving God meeting me.

He goes before,
He comes to meet.
So watch for him,
Be ready, greet.