What say your tired, weary bones?

Soul, are you depleted?

Have your resources dried up?

Food and rest for body, mind, and spirit are out of reach.

Are you fresh out of all you need to keep going?

You have come to the place where all you have is God.

Is this where we become profane, earthy, and vulgar in our primal hunger?

Is this where we sudden discover religion? Do we bow before the sacred and gasp in awe.

You  and I stand before the altar of shewbread in the place of sacred worship, but we are dirty, tired, and famished travelers.

We are too weary to worship.

We are just common folk devoid of lofty ideals or deep thoughts.

It is a good place to be, not a comfortable place, yet, a comforting place.

It is a hard place, this school of reliance and trust where we discover that there is an essence to what is spiritual and an immediacy to eternity.

There is a finite and imminent intersection with transcendent infinity.

You have arrived at more of an altar than it seems.

This school of Theology and Life has drawn you to its campus.

You have traveled a rocky path with curves and tunnels, uncertain trails, and slippery slopes to matriculate, but it is a prestigious school.

You cannot afford the tuition and you bring nothing of value to the bargaining table. Your enemy is too strong for you. He robs you of all you have left.

At the altar, you find there is nothing before you but holy and dedicated bread. Your first instinct is to eat, but you remember that this bread was not laid on the altar for you, but for God. It is holy bread. It is sacred.

In 1 Samuel 21, David is hungry, as are his warriors.

David understood the need for respite. He understood need, depletion, and the body's yearning for refreshment, but he was also constrained by the law of God. Yet, he moved with the awareness of great need and a surge of faith that told him that God also knew his need and was making provision from His own storehouse.

He eats holy bread and shares it with his hungry soldiers..

It is a clear violation of law and tradition, but he does it anyway and convinces the priests to help him do it.

He makes a good case, but the essence of the argument is need.

Need. Such a crude concept for such a holy place and time!

God cares about our needs.

Later, Jesus cites David as an example when the nit-pickers are nit-picking his disciples' lax attitude toward picking food to eat on the Sabbath.

It is not that Jesus is disrespecting law and tradition; nor was David.

Neither held reverence in contempt. Both were as aware, and more aware than most or any, of the vastness of the space between common man and uncommon God.

Jesus was going for essence. Essence unveils the face and intention of God in love and holiness.

To what does law and tradition point?

Indeed, what is the point?

Is it not the glory of God?

Here is God's glory manifest also God's goodness, grace, love, and attention to humanity. 

God is exalted in the ways in which He reveals His love and care for humanity.

God is exalted in encounter where earthbound humans, scarred by sin and flawed by the injuries incurred in the rough business of living, are drawn near.

Sometimes, God defies the traditions that God  has established in order to meet such men and women.

It is that place where sacred and profane meet and God declares it all holy.