Hungry for God: Biblical Reflections on FoodSample

Food is Jesus: John 6:26-40 How many different types of bread do you think there are in the world? One count gave as many as forty-five varieties and that wasn’t exhaustive! I wonder how many you could name? Bread is one of the most ubiquitous foods in humanity’s diet and dates back even as far as the Neolithic era. Anyone who has ever made their own bread knows that a mix of just a few simple ingredients in the right quantities creates an almost miraculous transformation into a substance that nourishes and sustains. One of the great things about food is that our relationship to it seems to be analogous to our relationship with God. We seem to have been created so that our need and desire for food in some way mirrors our need and desire for God. Jesus reflects this when he describes himself as the ‘bread of life’. The disciples had just witnessed Jesus’ miracle whereby he transformed two loaves and five fish into enough food to feed possibly upwards of 15,000 people. As the people were feeding on his words, so Jesus gave them physical food to feed on too. I love food and I am fairly certain that you do too. And yet Jesus’ words remind us that, ultimately, we find our richest satisfaction in him and in the life that he gives us. And so, as we eat and as we get involved in working to ensure that others can eat too, we do so reverentially, using it as a means to reflect on how Jesus sustains us each day; on how he brings colour and variety to our lives and on how he gives us the energy and motivation to keep going. Reflection: As you eat today ask Jesus to make you also more and more hungry for him and his ways.