More than Biscuits and Cornbread.

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, I am finalizing my grocery list and at the top is to make sure I have assigned the role of rolls to a dependable person. A meal in a southern household without bread is a travesty. Growing up, we ate bread at every meal. Breakfast included either toast or biscuits. The bread was definitely a staple at lunch, and biscuits either made an encore at dinner or was replaced by cornbread. Depending on the menu, even “light bread,” as my Little mamaw used to call it, showed up. The bread was a staple. Sometimes if I got hungry in between, she would put butter and sugar on a piece of bread, and I thought that was a delicacy. I learned later, cookies were a rare treat in large families, and so bread and sugar were a practical but great stand-in.

It takes a special hand to bake good bread, and not every cook achieves this. Some folks who cannot cook can bake the best bread! I had a friend who practically couldn’t boil water, but the loaves that came out of her oven made your mouth water, your nose started smiling, and your tummy growling while you were hunting the butter and the knife to dress it. I can walk past a lot of establishments, but bakeries? They call out to me, and I can’t just not go in!

I know for lots of folks, due to dietary needs and health/weight concerns, they have to avoid the bread aisle. However, they have to adjust their intake to replace the energy that bread gives us. Carbs equal energy. Just ask the runners and athletes the day before an event what is on the menu.

So when I come to the part in scripture where Jesus shares that He is the bread of life, this I can relate to!! Jesus promised that whoever partook of Him would never hunger again. In this passage, Jesus pronounces that He is the sustenance we need for life. He alone can fill our deepest needs and satisfy our hunger. Not the physical kind but the spiritual kind that gnaws at our heart and soul until we come to Him and recognize He is what fills our emptiness. I relate to it like this. No meal that I am ever truly satisfied with excludes bread. Sure, I get the cultural training, family experience, etc. But even dining alone, until I break bread, I haven’t truly eaten and been satisfied. How much more does Christ balance out the nutritional needs of my spirit.? Only He can give me the energy I need to run this race called life. Only He has the endless supply that can equip me for all I need. And, when Jesus met with the disciples at the Last Supper and broke bread with them, He instructed them that this was symbolic of His body, broken and offered up to secure salvation for those who would come to His table. Christ’s statement contained the future implication of what the Bread of Life would ultimately mean for us as lost sinners.

Then when I consider the impact of this I Am statement, it takes me back to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 6:9-13). Jesus instructs us to pray for a daily supply of bread. While the meaning is about not asking for more than beyond today’s need, it also reminds me I need to fellowship and spend time with the Bread of Life on a daily basis. A feast or famine approach to my relationship with Jesus hasn’t worked out for me. Starving myself spiritually results in me being vulnerable to reaching for things that temporarily satisfy and often make my soul sick with regret and leave me feeling separated from the presence of God. Then I attempted to feast at God’s table and often had trouble digesting the truth He offered because my appetite had not been matured by the spirit and had been hindered by my pride. I never really gained the strength and maturity I needed until I spent time daily with Jesus, the Bread of Life Himself.

This season of Advent beginning, marked by the celebration of the Pilgrim’s Progress to seek religious freedom, reminds me, I have so much to be thankful for. As the reflection continues on the arrival of Christ, who came in human form but was divine, I celebrate that the Bread of Life offered HImself for me and extended the invitation for me to keep watch with others for His second arrival. Until then, He alone gives me the sustenance and satisfaction I need to live while I wait.

Lord, thank you that you knew my soul had a hunger and that you promised that if I came to you, I would be satisfied. Help me not to settle for junk food the world offers when I can be sustained by you, the Bread of Life. Let my heart and voice be filled with Thanksgiving.

Come back for the next part of the Christmas refreshing in the ” I am” series when the 5 o’clock worker is reminded that there are sheep in the vineyard.