For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. John 6: 33

Sustenance

            This morning I'm thinking about bread.  As I write, freezing rain is glazing everything outside, the evergreen shrub by my window, the deck, the trees, and beyond these, the roads.  Even though Mother Hubbard's cupboards are pretty bare, the big, once-a-month grocery shopping trip I'd planned for today will have to be postponed.  Instead, I'll be staying in where it's safe and warm and dry.  And I'll be making a big pot of turkey vegetable soup because soup and cold, rainy days just seem to go together.  Along with the soup, I'll bake some bread.  I expect that the house is going to smell really good!  As my husband and sons pull into the drive this evening, I imagine wisps of aroma wafting out to them, drawing them inside.

            Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life.  He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst" (John 6:35).

            While bread looks different in different cultures, almost every culture has some form of this staple food.  I once heard about a native people group who were just being reached with the Gospel that didn't have a grain-based form of bread.  Translators were stumped about how to make the above passage, and others like it, meaningful in this culture until they learned that the peoples' staple food, their "bread", so to speak, was the yam.  The people came to an understanding of Jesus being their sustenance when translators explained to them that He is the "yam of life."  No matter what one's bread looks like, in every culture, bread means sustenance.

            Jesus also said:  "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44a).

            Just as I imagine the aroma of fresh-baked bread drawing people into my kitchen, so it is Father God who draws people to Jesus.  And notice that in both passages--"He who comes to me" and "No one can come to me"-- we must decide, must make the choice.  We must decide whether or not we will go to Him, conform ourselves to His plans.  We must not expect Him to join us or conform Himself to our plans any more than we would expect a loaf of bread to come to us and ask to be eaten.

            We long to be in His presence, but where?  Where He is?  Or where we are?  For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me (John 3:38).  My prayer is that what was true of Jesus, may also be true of me.

Daye Phillippo

March 2013