Wednesday, August 9, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:48-51

'I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that a person may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

Reflection

What feeds a human soul so that the heart remain full and strong, the soul quiet and at peace?

This is no idle question amid the changes and chances of life that come as quickly as a telephone ring, bearing news you do not want.

There is no need to list the losses and challenges that come to even the most sheltered lives. Human life is what it is … unpredictable, gloriously filled with joy one moment and pitted with angst or sorrow the next.

We may wish for a stable soul, calm amid the storms, quiet in the face of painful loss, but few enjoy such strength and stability.

Some may reach for this state through denial of what is happening within them or by trying not to care, pretending the ship of their soul doesn’t rock much on the waves of living.

But cares will and do come, the soul shakes, the heart quakes and we hunger for strength, an awareness that allows a peaceful heart amid an unpeaceful world.

Jesus asks us what we are eating: Are we eating him? Are we consuming what is in him that we know what he knows and our hearts dwell in the land where he dwells?

“Come and eat,” he bids. “Come and know. Come and lay down at the side of my great soul that your soul may enter the place of peace and eat the bread of knowledge, taking in the life that is in me.”

There is no other way to become a great soul, who remains full and quiet, at peace and full amid jangling nerves and unpleasant news, except by eating, again and again, the revelation Jesus bears.

He bears the Life of the One who is Life, the love of the One who is Love. In nearness to him, we eat the bread of his all-encompassing heart and know ourselves encompassed and filled with the life of eternity even now, amid the noise and news of living these days.

“All is well,” great souls have said in every age. They were not naïve or stupid. They had just eaten more than we have.

Pr. David L. Miller