July 23

The Bread of Life

The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven — John 6:33

No bread that grows on the earth will furnish food for a human soul. In all our worldly strivings and ambitions we are thinking only of our perishing part, we are looking only after the poor, frail tabernacle, while we are allowing the dweller within to die of hunger. Recently in a well-furnished house in a city a family was found starving for bread. There are many souls starving in bodies that are luxuriously cared for. A soul cannot feed on grains and fruits. The finest luxuries of earth will never quench a soul’s hunger.

Manna is called once in the Bible “angels’ food,” but this was only a poetical designation, referring to its falling from the sky. Manna did not really come down from heaven. It was not angels’ food. It was food for bodies, not for spirits. Angels could not have lived on it. Imagine an angel taking up his abode in some millionaire’s palace on the earth. Would he care for the magnificent things filling every apartment? Would he sit down and feed at the rich man’s luxurious table? And souls and angels are much alike in their needs; both are spirits, unable to subsist on material food. Yet many people live as if their souls could be clothed in earth’s finery, and fed and satisfied with earth’s dainties.

Bread for souls must literally come down from heaven. It is the nature of the soul to feed upon immortal things. Its hungers and cravings are for pardon of sin, for peace, for communion with God, for holiness of character, for Christ-likeness, for restoration to the Divine favour. The bread for these spiritual hungers must come down from heaven. It must come in the form of mercy, of grace, of love, of Divine friendship, of gifts of life. Such food is found on no table on earth; it grows in no earthly clime; it can come only from God. It is for God, the living God, that our souls hunger and thirst.