Ordinary Time

Pause

“‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said, ‘is what we chiefly need.’”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871

Listen

Jesus told them, “I assure you, it wasn’t Moses who gave the bread from heaven to you, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. The bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They said, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!”

Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

John 6:32-35

Think

When you think about bread, you probably imagine a hot, fluffy French baguette ready for some butter or a turkey sandwich. But did you know that the Bible describes manna as a fine flake-like substance, or a dark, sticky resin that tasted like a honey wafer? Either way, manna would not have been the first choice for a hungry Israelite. But for a people starving and desperate enough for food, it was everything.

If Jesus is this bread of life, maybe we experience him most fully among those who are starving and desperate enough to say, like the gathered crowd, “Give us this bread all the time!” All people can experience Jesus’ power to heal, transform, and bring new life, but it comes to those who know nowhere else to turn.

Are you desperate enough for it? Have you spent enough time with those who are, with those who are starving, addicted, cast out, isolated, mistreated, or at rock-bottom? In your own deep craving or another’s, you will find Jesus, the bread of life.

Blake Tommey

Pray

God and the living Christ, continue to be the bread of life for me and this hungry world. Move me toward places and people who know nowhere else to turn but to the healing and transforming power of Jesus. In the same manner, make me a person who is ready for no other bread than the bread that truly saves me. Amen.

Go

“Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven,
Feed me till I want no more.”

From “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” 1745, by William Williams