Always Fresh Daily

When I was setting things up for the Thanksgiving display at the church, I came across some loaves of bread that had been left over from last year’s display—perfectly preserved after a year in storage. I’m not sure what that might say about what was baked into those loaves to keep them from going moldy, but I was impressed nonetheless—even though they were as hard as rock!

Jesus described Himself as the bread of life (John 6:35). “...the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world...I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:33-35).

No illustration can compete with the real thing, but those hard Thanksgiving loaves did remind me of the permanence of God’s gift of the bread of life. Unlike those loaves, God’s gift never gets stale or hard, but it is a “forever” gift, one that will outlast any circumstance and any attack.

The implication of the text here is that this “bread of life” provides constant nourishment to the soul. My Thanksgiving loaves (even the new ones still warm from the oven that I added this year) are too hard and stale to be eaten now. But I can feed my mind and my soul daily on Jesus, the Bread of Life, without ever having to worry that the supply will come to an end or it will get old and grey with the passage of time.

I’ve been reading the Scriptures since I was first able to read—about 60 years now. It’s true, the Bread of Life, the Manna from heaven, the Living Word of God is just as fresh, nourishing and filling now as it was when I first began to read it.