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Reading this passage, you wonder if your thoughts can contain what God has said. To the average person -- even the average Christian -- it would seem the height of foolishness to buy food without money. Most would think you meant begging or stealing! But is God talking about the bread of heaven? Is it spiritual food? Passages like this make me afraid to take God too literally! I don't even care if creation took place in seven 24-hour days, or a few thousand or even millions of years! For my soul to find riches I will have to ask God to give us his Spirit, or we will miss the whole point. As a missionary to Nepal I had to deal with a people whose thoughts were on a different level, but when we turned to the Lord's words, his truth opened to us. We suddenly became brothers and sisters in Christ. I taught in the seminary there, but with our language barrier I felt it was more important to turn to the parables than to try to explain doctrines. There were too few Nepali words that fit our doctrinal statements. But when I translated Jesus' parables into Nepali, I could see several "Aha!" moments. Jesus spoke only in parables so the common people might understand -- he also lived them. That way nations we do not know will come to him. Our ways are not his ways! That is something you can learn in a classroom or preach from a pulpit!
