Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Immediately the sentence was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven away from human society, ate grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, August 14, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
What an interesting punishment. Because of Nebuchadnezzar’s sins against God and God’s people, he is driven out into the wilderness to live like a wild animal. It’s not clear how he was driven out or by whom. Maybe God just made him lose it and he ran off for a bit. Was this actually a punishment? Or a deliberate act of atonement, as Daniel suggested he carry out?
When I look back at my life over the last 50-odd years, I can recognize periods in which I felt driven out, when I felt “other”, and when I lived, if not like a wild animal, at least in a way that was out of control and/or out of my own mind and body in some way.
Addiction is the most obvious example. In the completely unmanageable reality of my life in my early 30s, I was just barreling through each day in an irritable power drive and self-medicating with volumes of pizza, pasta, and ice cream (and literally anything else I could get my hands on). My weight went up and up and up right along with my hatred for my body and fear for my health and yet I couldn’t stop. The only way I could cope with the out-of-control aspects of my marriage, my parenting, my job, my social network, was to numb the pain with food. Was it a punishment for something I’d done “wrong?” Of course not. But it was a self-punishment for my belief that I couldn’t do things “right.”
The good news is that the pain of my food addiction brought me into the recovery community, where I not only found release from my disease of compulsive eating, but I also discovered a new way to understand and be in relationship with God, which launched me into a breathtaking transformation of… well, everything. Spoilers for tomorrow: Nebuchadnezzar gets there, too.
When have I felt completely “driven out” of my own life in some way?
