Growing up, I loved it when my days at Grandma’s coincided with her baking cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls. To this day, a yeasty aroma transports me back to her kitchen in the 1980’s. Carbs may not be en vogue, but I can think of few better tastes than too much melty butter on bread straight out of the oven. 

I thought of this as I came to know that the Bread of the Presence, in the Old Testament tabernacle, was freshly formed into twelve loaves every week on the Sabbath and set on a golden table, representing the twelve tribes of God’s people. God commanded, “Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times” (Exodus 25:30). 

I’m thinking of the smell of that bread as the loaves were shoveled onto the table, and the warmth as it touched the tongues of the Levites—the only ones allowed to eat it, together on behalf of the people, in a holy place. 

It’s a beautiful, sensory picture of our “God with us”—the Bread of Life--warm for the week’s demands. 

God’s presence stretches as a theme throughout the Bible: from walks in the cool of the day, to Hagar in the desert, to manna, to “pitching His tents” among us (John 1:14), to the imperative life sap in His branches, to a Holy Spirit flaming within. 

Perhaps it surprises none of us that every culture in the world cultivates, waters, scythes, grinds, and finally bakes its own form of bread, from its unique soil, natural resources, and culture. When every nation brings its gifts to God at the end of time—its unique strengths, as an offering—He will have provided all the means (Isaiah 66:20).  

As a global worker, I needed daily bread—daily, warm presence—for the energy from my feet hitting the concrete floor in the morning to the time I tucked them (much dirtier now) beneath the blue coolness of the sheets at night, and all the wisdom in between. Granted, like the Israelites, I sometimes didn’t recognize His manna when it arrived. (Manna meant “What is it?” Yep. That’s me.)  

But this is the kind of abiding, the kind of presence, I want to offer; as Ruth Barton notes about us genuinely being with God, “We will have bread to offer that is warm from the oven of our intimacy with God.” 

Does that type of presence define what I experience—and have to offer others in His name?