Bread of life

“ Remember the counsel that is given, "STORE UP ALL YOUR GRAIN," and take care of it! Prize it above gold and silver, above rich clothing and fine apparel, and above everything else except the bread of life! And I tell you it is almost as necessary to have bread to sustain the body as it is to have food for the spirit; for the one is as necessary as the other to enable us to carry on the work of God upon the earth. ”

“ But let not the contempt which some cast upon the word of God cause us to value it the less: it is the bread of life, substantial bread, and will nourish those who by faith feed upon it to eternal life, whoever calls it light bread. ”

“ Now at last thou hast procured thyself daily bread, a decent habit for thy bones and flesh: inspiration thirsteth for its nourishment, demanding from thy soul images and forms. Thou createst, thou art bringing thy Ideal to fulfilment. How swiftly move the wheels of thy being! Thy existence is tenfold redoubled, thy pulse is beating as when thou breathest the atmosphere of high mountains. Thou spendest in one day whole months of life. How many nights passed without sleep, how many days in ceaseless chain, all filled with agitation! ”

“ So that bread is a universal food, and seems to contain in it all the nutritive qualities of every other sort of food, all of which borrow their virtues from it; as the planets derive their light from the universal luminary, the sun. And this we may conceive to be the reason of the great virtue there is in bread, that, being the most common and ordinary food, every man might find in it wherewithal to support life, though he should have nothing else. In a word, whatever we eat or drink, ought to be looked upon as a miracle of divine wisdom and goodness. ”

“ For He says, 'I am that Bread of Life.' That is an advance on the previous saying. He gives bread, and any man that was conscious of possessing some great truth or some great blessing which, believed and accepted, would refresh and nourish humanity, might have said the same thing. ”

“ We have the promise—our bread shall be given, and our water sure—not only the natural food that sustains outward life, but the true bread of heavenly affections, and the waters of pure truth, which nourish and sustain the spirit. ”

“ JESUS called himself "the bread of life." What is the nature of bread as it relates to man's needs? We call it the "staff of life." We mean that it sustains life. Water refreshes and cleanses and enters together with food, or "bread," into the composition of man's body. ”

“ My brethren, hanker not after the meat which perishes but rather seek for the spiritual food that nourishes even to eternal life; and this is the bread of life which the Son gives to all who will take it and eat, for the Father has given the Son this life without measure. ”

“ So many times with me you have begged bread in poor men’s houses; and all your lives you are to beg it in my name: you will have the moldy hard crusts which dogs refuse, the dry bits left at the bottom of the dish, the crusts gnawed by children and old people which they have let fall upon the hearth. But you know want, and nights of fasting and the pale face of poverty. But you are strong; you have the powerful jaws of those who eat hard bread. You will not lose courage, if no place is made for you at the tables of the well-to-do. ”

“ Such for example are bread for the body and some moral aliment for the mind. Upon this principle it is that I have always deemed it essential, every time I have addressed you, to mingle some moral instruction with every thing I have said, since it is this which constitutes the true leaven of the bread of life—and this it is which will always prove an acceptable part of their mental food, to all whose appetites and tastes have not been depraved by mental condiments, which stimulate and gratify the passions at the expense of the soul. ”

“ But has it ever struck you that, after all, the amount of material bread—even if we extend the word to everything which is consumed for bodily necessity and comfort—which any individual can consume is really very small; and that the bad distribution, the shocking waste of this material bread arises from being, so to speak, used symbolically, used as spiritual bread, as representing those ideas for which men hunger: superiority over other folk, power of having dependants, social position, ownership, and privilege of all kinds? ”

“ They were earning, by the sweat of their brow, a food which sustained their lives from day to day,—God endowing them with both the power to toil and the reward of toil. They might toil for a bread that would sustain another different kind of life in them,—a life not of hours and instants, but eternal. ”

“ In the present dark hour all the world is drinking of one chalice, its wine the life outpoured for others. All humanity is partaking of one bread, a body which has most truly and literally being given to be broken. ”

“ That may all be crammed into a parenthesis. 'He shall not die,' but live the true life which comes from the possession of union with Him who is the Life. The bread which we eat sustains life; the Bread which He gives originates it. ”

“ Hence bread in general corresponds to the affection of all good, because it supports life better than other aliments, and because bread means all kinds of food. On account of this correspondence also the Lord calls Himself the bread of life. ”

“ Christ speaks of himself as bread to be eaten,—bread, simple, humble, unpretending, vitally necessary to human life, made by the bruising and grinding of the grain, unostentatiously having no life or worth of its own except as it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them. ”

“ It is the food above all others for the sustaining of life and the promotion of growth. So the glorious doctrines of the gospel are the natural and most proper food for the Christian. The newly created life in the regenerated soul instinctively turns to the word of God for nourishment. It is the natural food for the new life. Nothing else can be substituted for it and growth go on unhindered. Without this food the Christian will die. "Man shall not live by bread alone," says the Great Shepherd, "but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." ”

“ The disciples were amazed when they returned to find that the weariness had gone out of His face, and that He looked like one who had been at a feast!
And that is the law of life. “My meat is to do the will.” There is a secret nutriment in the bread we give away. The Lord gives us to eat of the “hidden manna” whenever we are seeking the refreshment of our fellows. Distributed bread has a sacramental efficacy for our own souls. The man who feeds the hungry shall himself be “satisfied as with marrow.” ”

“ The same pious attitude was resumed {200} when the raised dough was made into small loaves, during the baking, and whenever the mother of the family put her hand into the basin where the loaves were kept, to take out bread for her family's needs.
Does it now seem strange, unnatural, or in any way out of harmony with the trend of her whole life, for such a woman to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread"? Shall we receive the gifts and forget the Giver? However circuitous our way to our daily bread may be, the fact remains that we do feed on God's own life. ”

“ The vanity of the things of this world. They are not bread, not proper food for a soul; they afford no suitable nourishment or refreshment. Bread is the staff of the natural life, but it affords no support at all to the spiritual life. ”

“ They eat their bread with a sweetness and a capacity, generated by their active and laborious habits, that we, who lead more sedentary lives, and with minds and energies dissipated by a hundred objects unknown to them, have no idea of. ”

“ Jesus quoted the conclusion of this passage, and wished to say: “I suffer hunger willingly; and, as far as concerns My life, mere natural bread is not necessary for Me. God, by His word, can give other food (witness the manna) , and His word is powerful enough to sustain man without any food at all.” ”

“ Patrick Geddes. I THE saying that “man shall not live by bread alone” has been in familiar circulation so long and on authority so good that it is remarkable how slightly it has affected the general conduct of life. Bread and the things symbolised by bread in the saying are and must remain the first care of men, but they are first only in the sense of being preliminary, the necessary conditions of the main and supreme business of life. ”

“ It might be truly said, that I now worked for my bread. It is a little wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought much upon; viz. the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread.
I, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to be my daily discouragement, and was made more and more sensible of it every hour, even after I got the first handful of seed corn, which, as I have said, came up unexpectedly, and indeed to a surprise. ”

“ Many had cleanness of teeth in our cities, and want of bread in our borders: and to some the stuff of bread was so utterly broken, (which makes complete famine) that they did eat and were neither satisfied nor nourished: And some of them said to me, that they could mind nothing but meat, and were nothing bettered by it; and that they were utterly unconcerned about their souls, whether they went to heaven or hell. ”

“ This petition for daily bread is doubtless to be understood in two ways, both for the necessary supply of our bodily food and for the necessities of our spiritual support. There is a necessary supply of bodily food for the preservation of our daily life, without which we can not live. ”

“ In these years, while a father labours for his children's bread, and thanks God that the bread comes to him for his labour, his children grow up, develop characters, assume attitudes in the world he never suspects, bringing him joy or sorrow [110] as the fruit is bitter or sweet. ”