People were crowding and pushing each other as they lined up to receive their bread. The line was long, and sometimes there weren’t enough loaves. The three days a week that the volunteer center offered a free loaf of bread were always ‘adventurous’ - because desperate old folk pushed and shoved each other to receive the gift. 

“I hadn’t had bread in so long, that when I was given my first loaf at the volunteer center, I sat down right on the front steps and ate the whole thing. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I smelled the amazing aroma and swallowed chunk after chunk of the delicious bread. When our city was occupied by the Russian soldiers, no stores, bakeries, not even electricity was available! We were scared that we would starve, starve in the 21^st century...”, her voice broke and tears welled up in her eyes. I listened, captivated by the way she spoke of the bread. Her eyes glowed as she recalled biting into the first loaf after lacking it for so long. You could see the gratefulness in her eyes; she’d learned to appreciate something very simple. 

Week after week, the bread lines would grow. We watched the desperate arguments and tried to graciously solve problems that arose; sometimes to no avail. Yet we would continue giving, because we received and had something to give. The best days would be Sundays, when we watched some of those people come to Worship service to receive another type of nourishment. On those mornings, the gospel sounded loud and clear; and we were continuing to give, because we had received. We were sharing the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ – the ultimate, life-changing Bread. 

To this day, many of those people received the physical bread but walked away from the spiritual. It was a pattern that we can trace back to the Israelites in the desert, as they filled their tummies with manna. The pattern continued generations afterwards, and probably will continue in the generations to come. So many truly appreciated the physical bread, and so few, the spiritual... 

But that doesn’t mean that Church should look to the patterns of history, because the goal and mission hasn’t changed. May we not tire of proclaiming that true nourishment is found in the Person of Christ, the One that fills every inch of our souls...