On my birthday, my team at work went to lunch. After the burgers and fries, and while I sipped a delicious peanut butter milkshake, they asked me the annual “birthday questions”: What surprised you most this year? What was the hardest part of the year? The best? What did you learn about the Lord this year?
I’ve learned many things about the Lord this year, but when I surveyed the last 365 days, it was encouraging and humbling to see a silver thread, a theme woven throughout the choices and challenges my family had made and experienced in 2019. The thread? His provision. His bountiful, beautiful, magnificent provision. He made a way in every desert (Isaiah 43:19). Every valley had a way out, every mountain had a gentle slope down.
Jesus provides beautifully and bountifully in today’s story about the boy who had five loaves and two fishes. We discover very little about the boy from the text itself, just that he was young (anywhere from a child to a man in his twenties), and that he was likely poor because the bread is described as being made of barley, which was common to the poor. But there’s another interesting detail tucked in there: it was almost Passover (John 6:4)—the Jewish holiday and feast celebrating God’s provision as He delivered His people from Egypt, the manna and quail they feasted on in the desert, and the promised land they inherited.
Bread is a silver thread running through Scripture, a reminder of God’s provision: manna in the desert (Exodus 16), Elisha’s miracle (2 Kings 4), and the provision of wheat for Ruth (Ruth 2). This event with the boy’s bread and fish took place shortly before Passover, and afterward, Jesus taught that He was the bread of life, sent from heaven (John 6:35). “This is the work of God,” Jesus said, “that you believe in the one he has sent” (v.29).
A few chapters later, during Passover, Jesus and His disciples broke bread together (John 13). While John doesn’t record the conversation where Jesus blesses the bread and the wine and institutes the Lord’s supper, the other three Gospels do. Jesus, who had a short time before taught His disciples that He is the very bread of life, now broke a loaf, blessed it, and shared it with them.
And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them,
and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
After He is risen, He provides again through bread. He walks the Emmaus Road with two disciples, who do not recognize Him, and they invite Him to stay with them that night. And “it was as he reclined at the table with them that he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24:30–31). The disciples race to Jerusalem to find the rest of the disciples, describing “how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (v.35).
How many times throughout Scripture has God made Himself known through the breaking of bread? The Israelites, wandering through the desert with more manna than they could eat. Widowed Ruth’s overflowing baskets of wheat. Elisha’s miracle. A poor boy and his five loaves, multiplied to feed thousands.
Jesus is the bread of life, and He died on the cross in the ultimate act of bountiful and beautiful provision. And we, the communion of saints, have the privilege of sharing in that bread every time we partake in the Lord’s Supper. May Christ, our bread of life, always be made known through the breaking of the bread, the sign of God’s abundant provision to His people, throughout history and today.
KIRSTYN You and your family are in my prayers today and in the days ahead! May you feel His comfort and strength even in this difficult journey. Hugs and love!
John 6:26 stood out to me today. Jesus called the people out on why they were ‘seeking Him.’ A reminder that my ‘seeking Him’ should be about a relationship with Him for eternity and not about what He provides for my earthly needs. I need that reminder especially in these trying days.
MELANIE – this is one of the most beautiful writings I have seen on SRT!
NORA, HAPPY BIRTHDAY and may God bless you in the year ahead!
This concept has been so present to me lately. I posted a few weeks ago that I’m pregnant with a little boy that the doctors give no chance for. Well, yesterday, we found out he has gone to be with Jesus. I’m 25 weeks pregnant and now I will go to the hospital tomorrow to give birth to him. Of course, this is devastating, but God has been so very gracious to me during this entire pregnancy. I feel closer to His heart than ever before. Please pray for my husband and I (and our 6 other kids) this week.
It’s in the giving thanks coupled with the breaking of the bread where the miracle occurs. I’ve been reading “The Broken Way” by Ann Voscamp, and it’s all about this. Jesus IS the bread, broken for us. When we are broken, and can give thanks in our brokenness, we are close to His heart.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I pray for God’s comfort to surround your family.
Praying for you and your family.
God be with you
Praying for you in this time of loss—May God bless you with his sweet peace, that you be wrapped in the arms of our Savior.
I’m so sorry. I’m praying for you and your family.
So true, Kirstyn. Beauty for ashes.
I’m praying for you and sending you a virtual hug. I also pray that you have a safe delivery.
Kirsten, I feel for you. I lost my first son at full term when he was just shy of two days old. Devastating is the word, for sure. Praying Jesus is close to you and your family during this season of grief.
The readings from yesterday and today brought to mind one of my favorite passages of scripture. Thank You, God for Your invitation to come and be satisfied!
“”Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”
Isaiah 55:1-3 ESV
https://www.bible.com/59/isa.55.1-3.esv
Amen!
We are called to walk in faith and to do so faithfully. Every day, through every circumstance. May our eyes be open to see what it is that He provides. May we be grateful……Thank you Churcmouse. This is my prayer today!!
Happy Birthday Nora!
“JESUS is the Bread of Life, and HE died on the cross in the ultimate act of bountiful and beautiful provision.” May I live my life so that others may see this beautiful truth!
I have to be honest this one is a hard one to remember these days with everything going on in our world. I am reminded that God is the bread of life. He gives us EVERYTHING we need to make it through the valleys of life…in his timing we will make it through the valleys. The “in his timing” is the hard part isn’t it? Especially, during these unprecedented times. I pray that God fills us all with his strength to make it through these hard times
Happy Birthday Nora!!! May today be filled with love and laughter!!