Cast Your Bread

Shalach

One Hebrew word to carry with you, cast. The lexicons give the Hebrew as shalach, to send, to send away, to let go. Hold that, because this is the story of a thing I let go of, and did not know had come back.

The Borrowed Seat

I was sitting in a service that was not my own. A French service, in a room we share, and I was waiting for our own to begin. I could not follow a word of it, and yet something moved in me right there in the middle of a language I did not speak.

To tell you why that moment matters, I have to take you back two days.

On the Friday before, I met with someone about a business, and at the end we prayed, whichever direction God will take this, we will go. And we promised to fast until the answer came. That prayer, I know now, was me casting my bread, me putting the whole decision on the water and letting it go. Then Saturday came, and I did not fast, I went through my whole day and the thing I promised slipped right through my hands. And a quiet sits on you after that, the quiet of knowing you fell short of your own word to God.

So there I was that Sunday, a dropped fast behind me, sitting in a borrowed seat in a service I could not understand. And that is exactly where God chose to move me.

Right there, He put this verse in me, my pastor gave me a little space, and I stood and spoke, only briefly, about the bread and the water and the faith it takes to cast a thing you cannot follow. I did not know the answer to my Friday prayer had just arrived. I stood up with it in my hands and I did not see it.

Eight Days Blind

They asked me to bring the word, and the next Sunday I preached. And it was there, preparing that sermon, in my own study, that the Spirit of the Lord let me know, the answer had already come, back in the French service, back on that first Sunday. Eight days, eight days I carried an answered prayer and did not know it was answered. The return came quick, but my seeing came slow.

And I believe that is where many of us live. Not always waiting on a bread that has not come back, but standing right beside the returned bread with our eyes down the road on a different ship. My own mind overlooked the answer God had already given, and rushed ahead to the sure return I am still waiting to see.

Faith Holds the Cargo

Here is how I have come to see it, and the seeing is mine. The bread is cargo, and I am the sender, and faith is the holder of the cargo. Solomon says thou shalt find it after many days, and I have taken that as a return I can count on, yet He does not hide from me that the way will not be smooth.

And do not stop at verse 1, because Solomon does not. Read what stands beside it.

Thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. Where the tree falleth, there it shall be. And he that watches the wind never sows at all. Solomon puts the not knowing, the letting go, and the watching all in three verses, and I did not have to bring any of it from somewhere else.

Count how many times he says it. Thou knowest not what evil shall be. Thou knowest not the way of the spirit. Thou knowest not how the bones grow. Thou knowest not the works of God. Thou knowest not whether shall prosper. Five times in six verses, and he never once tells me the method.

But look at what he sets beside the not knowing in verse 5. The way of the spirit. How the bones grow in the womb. Two things nobody can trace, and both of them are working the whole time. The wind blows. The child forms. Nobody watches the bones grow, and they grow.

And here is what I take from that. The not knowing is not an empty place. It is the in-between, and Solomon calls it the works of God who maketh all.

Here is my picture. You send a transfer at the bank, and it goes out of your sight. There is nothing to watch. But in the back office the wheels are turning the whole time, the clearing, the checking, the moving. You cannot really see it, but that does not mean work is not happening.

And then read what he does with all that not knowing. He does not say wait until you know. He says sow in the morning and do not withhold your hand in the evening.

Take the farmer. Farming is his living, so he has no choice but to get up and plant. He has no sure word about this season, none, and he cannot sit and watch the elements and make no move, because if he does not plant there is no harvest to reap. He does not know which sowing will take, so he sows in the morning and he sows again in the evening, and he covers the ground he can cover.

So there are two sides to this bread. One is a sure word. The other is my profession. And both of them must be operated by faith, spoken or unspoken.

Verse 1 gave me a return to look for, cast it and thou shalt find it. Verse 6 gives me no such thing, only the instruction to sow morning and evening, and it says outright that I cannot tell which will prosper. Both are words He spoke. But one names a return and the other does not, and neither one lets me see the road.

And two weeks after that Sunday a word came to me about the loaf itself, and I was compelled to look at its condition. From out the door the loaf begins to fall apart. I hold that as given to me and not as a thing Ecclesiastes stops to say.

And that is still the same picture I was given, so hold it as mine. The bread goes through something. Before it reaches its destination it is soaked, it may look like it is sinking, and still it is on its way. The sender does not know the path God will choose, yet the sender is assured that the bread shall return. And it will take a minute for the cargo to return, for the verse says after many days, not after many hours.

The Promise Gives the What, Not the Method

And here is where I have seen people misled, myself among them. Something comes to us about a thing, a leading, and we believe God has given it, and then we sit back and wait on ice cream, cake, and flowers, as though the thing carries itself. But look closely at what was actually handed to me. I had what I believed was a leading, and I had verse 1 telling me thou shalt find it after many days. What I did not have was the method. Nothing told me by which ship, through which storm, along which road. So even holding what I believed God had given, faith still had to be employed, because I had been shown an end and not a way to it.

That is why the casting is only the beginning and not the end. Now I must trust God through a path I cannot trace, a delay I did not expect, and a soaking I did not choose. The one who only holds the unction and waits for it to be sweet has forgotten that road, and that road is walked by faith and not by sight.

Once You Let Go

Once I put my cargo into the shipper’s hands I have no more control over it. That is the reason we get insurance, and in this story our insurance is God. Trust means I must let it go, the storm could come, the wind could blow, robbers could come, even the one who is paying may want to cheat us, yet our trust is in God. And that is my picture, not a rule. God is the covering over the whole trembling middle.

The king’s heart, and Solomon says the LORD turns it whithersoever He will. Now the verse names a king and not a cheat, so carrying it to every hand the bread passes through is my reach and not the proverb’s. But it is why I can let go.

The Faith That Speaks the Return

This is what faith rests on.

I must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

That is the spirit of faith, I believed, and therefore I speak. And speaking the return before I see it come is what I do, and Paul does not command it here.

And let me be honest with you, so no one carries this further than the verse does. It does not promise the loaf comes back dry and untouched, nor that any one venture will go the way I hope. My own bold assurance about where God is leading me is my testimony, and I hold it. The verse itself says one thing. Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days. Everything else in this study is mine.

Faint not is the grip that holds. And when I set Paul’s due season beside Solomon’s many days, that joining is mine.

So I put my trust in the One who said Cast. I have let it go, I cannot trace its path, yet I know the hand it fell from and the hand it will return to.

And I believed the Father had told me to send the bread. None of it was logical, none of it was practical, and to cast it wholeheartedly is to trust the One I believed told me to cast it.

And there is one more man in that passage. He did not plant. He just watched. His hope was in the elements going right for him, and not in the Overlord of the elements, so the season went by and he had nothing in the ground. And nothing works in the back office for him, because he never sent anything. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You have to make a deposit before you can withdraw, and that is my way of saying it and not Solomon’s.

It took faith in the One who said cast thy bread upon the waters. And this part is mine and not the verse. What kept me was not watching for the bread. It was keeping my eyes on the prize, which is the Sender who sent me. That is enough to praise Him in the trembling middle, long before I ever see the bread come back.