I removed his shoulder from the burden…
Psalm 81:7-8, 11, 17
In distress you called and I rescued you;
I am the LORD your God…
Open wide your mouth that I may fill it…
I will satisfy them with honey from the rock.
This psalm immediately conjured an image of baby birds waiting to be fed by their mama in our door wreath a few years ago. Blindly opening their beaks, expecting their mother to drop in the food she would carry to the nest each day. Stuck in the safety of a nest the mom created. Totally reliant on her.
Whatever she was bringing was going to satisfy the hunger they could not satisfy themselves.
I feel challenged about sitting like those baby birds in this life. Could I just sit in my helplessness and let God provide for me? Trust that whatever He was going to bring my way would be the thing to satisfy me? I often times don’t. I often am the baby bird, trying to fly too soon, or the baby bird unwilling to open my beak too busy focused on what is missing rather than receiving what is to come.
So much in this image. The mama bird satisfies what the baby birds cannot satisfy themselves.
God promises us: Your hunger is my burden, not yours. I hear your distress. I will provide. Open your life to me. I will give you sweetness from the hardest places.
In this Psalm, God promises He wants to take our burdens. He will fill the hungry places. He will fill those hungry places with sweet, natural, nourishing substance drawn from the rough, hard, closed off substance of life. He will satisfy with honey from a rock.
He knows our distress. He promises He will answer the need. And He knows the need; we don’t actually know the need. We need to trust that He knows us better than we know ourselves.
Do those baby birds know what they need to eat? No, but when mama bird comes, they know she knows what to give them. They open their mouths wide–like as wide as possible—total trust in her and what she is providing.
When I think about the “rock” places of my life, that seem void of anything lifegiving, I am comforted that God can bring something sweeter than I could imagine from those places.
God doesn’t promise that He’s going to give us whatever we want, but instead whatever we need. When I think of the hard, rocky places of my life, I just want them blown to bits. Like let’s just blast through this. Let’s drill past it.
But the Lord, says: No—I’m going to draw honey from this, so let’s just sit right here. Let me do the work; let me shoulder the burden. Open your mouth. Get ready to taste the sweetness of life.
I am drawn back to the lack of faith I know I have too often. In the same breath I proclaim this verse, I can humbly say, I am also crying out for more faith that He will fulfill this promise.
Have you seen honey from a rock? Have you opened your life to receive all the Lord can provide?
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