Thanks to my parents, teachers and television commercials I have a pretty good idea of which food, drink and supplements will “do a body good” . These good folks also warned me what to eat in moderation (potato chips and ice cream). Then there are those items which are to be totally avoided (street drugs).
In His infinite wisdom the Creator gives us an awareness of our need for spiritual nourishment. This deep-felt longing Jesus calls spiritual hunger and thirst. Along with the need, He promises to fill it. “Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness for verily he shall be filled.” We were created to know God, to love Him and work with and for Him. That’s why we are here on this “third stone from the sun”. The Supreme Being made human beings to enjoy the love that exists eternally between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
When God formed our first parents they enjoyed pure and perfect companionship with Him. Everything was all right. To state the obvious, Adam and Eve were right with God. They were “righteous”. But we know how the story played out. While they could freely eat from the fruit of the trees of the garden, the Slithery One tricked them into a false sense of hunger for the fruit that was forbidden by God. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that is was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Gen 3:6)
Everything changed. Things were not right anymore between the first humans and their Maker. They and we, their children, would always sense this nagging ache in the deepest part of our souls to be right with God again. We are unsettled and, apart from God’s Self Revelation, it is impossible for us to put our finger on the cause of this anxiety. So we seek to satisfy our spiritual hunger, to quiet the inner disturbance. In every tribe and nation, in every hut and palace, people everywhere have, for all time, reached out to the Invisible. Man lays down with his back to the ground and looks up into the starry night and cries, “Who are You, Unknown One? Do You know that I’m here?” Man gets up, carves a little idol, beats a log drum and blows an animal horn while dancing around a fire. “You who made the heavens, come and fill the aching emptiness that is bigger and darker than this night sky.”
And then a Child is born in Bethlehem which means “house of bread”. The Boy grows up to make the outrageous claim that He is the Living Bread that came down from heaven. He went as far as to say that His flesh was food and His blood drunk, something that many of His disciples found gross and offensive. “This is a difficult statement. Who can hear it?” Then as now, a great many walked away, wagging their heads to a life of spiritual starvation. The Messiah said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood you shall not have life within you.”
Jesus told the woman at Jacob's well that He had Living Water. “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The door has been open to disordered cravings that, while they appear to be a “delight to the eyes”, can never satisfy. The Enemy constantly presents poison and junk food for the soul. Just say 'NO'.
Jesus is the Living Bread we hunger for. As a deer pants for the refreshing stream, our souls long after the Living Water that flows from His heart. Nothing else will ever satisfy. As St. Augustine of Hippo wrote, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
