I
unzip my Bible case for a lunch-time reading in my basement office. A
Goldfish cracker falls free and rests on my desk. No denying I was at
church the previous day with my children.
The question is this: can I be
faulted for immediately thinking “Ixoye?” Feeding the five
thousand? Peter and the temple tax? Is there a global
interdenominational commission against corniness (GICAC, pronounced:
guy-kak)?
I swear it’s an automatic response, not a deliberate attempt to
gain an evangelical psycho-pop book deal (Snacking
on Faith: Finding God in everything from Twizzlers to Goldfish
Crackers,
Zondervan, 2012).
Yet,
that little orange-yellow fish on my desk sends me on a spiritual
stream-of-consciousness worthy of James Joyce. Children, fish,
children fed, Jesus feeding his flock, His flock becoming fishers of
men. Doing it justice would be the kind of trick only someone like
Ann Voskamp could pull off, exploding the mundane until it fills the
space between Earth and Heaven.
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge claimed to have written “Kubla Khan” based on an
opium dream, which sounds unlikely to those familiar with it,
considering the work’s high merits. Yet, the man was steeped in poetry,
in the works of the greatest poetic minds both past and
contemporaneous. Is it any wonder that someone so filled to bursting
with classically poetic sensibilities can spatter his writing desk
with “Kubla Khan” by merely pricking his finger with a lancet?
I
am not Coleridge (thank the Lord). And unfortunately, I am not so filled with
Scripture that it sloshes onto the rug when I’m shaken (though I
strive for it, and perhaps I may be granted the glory before I die).
However, two particular fish-related passages in Matthew -- Peter paying
the temple tax with a coin from a fish, and Jesus telling the
Apostles to cast their nets on the other side of the boat -- are not
only recent readings, but also the subject of much recent meditation
and journaling (and probably future blog posts). So perhaps it
shouldn’t be much of a surprise to me that the stale Goldfish
Cracker I’m now tossing into the trash throws me into
contemplations of Christ.
Had
it been an M&M, I probably would’ve just eaten it and gone back
to work.
