Want to know God?

Want to know God?

 

12th Street Baptist Church, Gadsden

Susan Seligson, who has traveled the world sampling breads, is upset people are eliminating bread from their diet and adding it to the “bad for you” list of foods. Author of “Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life,” Seligson wrote an article for Globe magazine in protest of the Atkins-

inspired “low-carb” diet. She points out that bread has an 8,000-year track record for sustaining life. She also points to an assortment of bread stuffs in every culture on earth: bagels, biscuits, baguettes, boule, tortillas, chapatti, pita, matzah — on and on the list goes. She reminds us how often people come together to “break bread.” She points out that in Arabic the word for bread — aysh — is also the word for “life.” She closes by saying, “I wouldn’t want to live in a world without bread.”

You may think she has gone a bit over the top, but the point she is making is that bread is basic to life. It’s foundational to human health and happiness. It sustains. It nourishes. It comforts. It draws people together. It delights the senses. You can live without steak. You can live without ice cream. You can’t live without bread. Bread is essential.

And that is what Jesus says about Himself in John 6:25–35. I am essential to life. You can’t live without Me. Everything that bread represents to human beings — sustenance, comfort, identity, relationship, goodness — I am.

Later on in John 6:47–50, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” Jesus is saying, “You don’t need manna. You need Me. You don’t need Moses. You need Me. You don’t need religion. You need Me.”

The people Jesus spoke to were not ready to admit they needed Him. They liked His miracles and teaching. They stumbled over the things people stumble over today. Don’t stumble. Come to Jesus. Only one thing is needed for this life and the life to come — personal faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Bread of Life.