Bread

There is a pang that strikes deeper than hunger. The heart can grumble louder in its silence than our tummies. Hunger and poverty are a form of loneliness that gnaws its way from the stomach lining to the heart.

You watch the person in the line in front of you with a full cart--of the things you want. No one knows you passed your wants with a longing eye for dry necessities only, and your cart is much more bare than it should be. No one knows.

The time searching for those last few coins in the line--just short, just short, but oh so close, where is it--that in reality is so short but seems a long time. And the sigh from the person behind alienates. Alone.

When the paper bills and the numbers in red form their own fog of loneliness.

The fear and loneliness reverberate together, feeding each other as the belly still rumbles.

Jesus steps into our loneliness here too. The Savior who knew 40 days of hunger. The Savior who knows what it means to not have his own coin to pay taxes but has to have a fish supply it (Matt. 17:24-27). This is also the Savior who fed the 5,000 (Matthew 14). The crowd chose to be hungry by choice, so perhaps there wasn’t that ache of loneliness of chronic hunger by necessity. But--but it is Jesus’ heart here that speaks to all types of hunger.

What was the look on Jesus’ face as he looked up to heaven and broke the bread? I think, perhaps it was a joy that was brighter than the mirroring sun as he knew, knew how delighted all would be. As he knew the physical satisfaction he would give. As he knew the crowds would be satisfied and fed. A delight in knowing his Father heard him, heard the rumbling tummies no one else--such as the disciples--cared about.

Can you see Jesus himself, after he was done breaking the bread and fish, sitting and sharing in the pure joy and wonder of the people. Crouched on the grass too, reaching from the same baskets as a woman from the village who was proficient at baking bread, the old man who had hobbled out, the man who worked in the vineyards and tended the olive trees of his town. The laughter that brimmed from Jesus’ own lips and the group, a laughter more full than the baskets of food.

Pause. Can you feel that joy? Come, no matter who you are. Enter into your Provider’s joy, for you.