Lenten Word 18: Bread

Bread is the universal sustanance of almost all cultures. It may be flat in some, huge in others, but people have related to and needed bread for all creation. We're first introduced to bread in Genesis 3:19 when God says that we would eat bread in our sweat, meaning that we would work for our food. Bread was the unexplainable gift in the form of the manna that the Israelites found every morning during a certain period of the Exodus. And it was bread that was used to tempt the very hungry Jesus after His 40 day and 40 night fast.

It is bread that Jesus used in his prayer, "Give us this day, our daily bread..." And it is bread that Jesus compares Himself with in the Gospel of John when He says He is the bread of life.

During our Lenten Journey we are fasting. We have given up something physically important to us to take up something spiritual to show that indeed, "Man (One) does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Mt. 4:4). And may it be so, that during our Lenten Journey we have been and are being nourished by that which eternally satisfied and fills, the Word of God. Some of us in this country suffer from "If I don't eat it now, when will it ever be available again" thinking, and over-eat because of that fear. The truth is that God provides and if we don't eat it during these forty days, it will be there after Lent. God is always with us and God's word is eternal. Feast on the love and life found in God's word.

PRAYER: Thank You, Loving God, for always providing exactly that which we need for our sustenance. May we be filled today with the Bread of Life, Jesus our Lord's presence. In His name we pray, amen.