Bread Grace

I remember it right then, passing pig farms. And that God would bring that story to memory now.

How bread became a comfort when bombs fell in World War II, shattering earth and all that is within and children wept for parents, cried for food. Refugee camps offered beds to huddling, dirty frames but could not furnish rest. Blast of days haunted pitch of nights. Nothing comforted shell-shocked, gaunt children. Fear rimmed the eyes and the hearts pounded, too loud, and the sleep fled. I know how nights blinked with the saucer eyes, the vigilant, terrified eyes. But somewhere in the dark, up between each narrow row of beds, a hand came to pull up the thin sheets, a hand to touch each bony shoulder and offer the fear-chased something to seize.

A piece of bread.

Dazed child hands took the bread, tucked in with bread. They gave thanks and rested on pillows of trust. The bread hushed the fears with assurance: “The sun sets and He has provided and you’ve ate. Tomorrow the sun will rise and again He will provide. You will eat bread again.”^a Hands clutch bread. And finally it comes: the terrified sleep deep.

I shake the head; sleeping with bread, a strange mental image. And yet really … isn’t that what that gratitude journal on the counter is? Opening the hand to receive the moments. Trusting what is received to be grace. Taking it as bread. Recount how we laughed today. How we cried today and it too was grace. How He fed us. We ate. We filled. We swept up the crumbs. So He lays us down to sleep. Trust tucks in. He has blessed today. Will He not bless again tomorrow? Sleeping with bread may seem strange, but Jesus knew the wilder.

He knew I’d only trust, rest, when I lived with bread in hand. When I eat manna.

Eucharisteo, remembering with thanks, this is the bread.

We take the moments as bread and give thanks and the thanks itself becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes. Thanks feeds our trust.

And it swells up in me and I can’t stop it, this surging sense of emancipation. Over a steering wheel in a white pickup, I can’t help this glorious laugh, the laugh of the unafraid and the bold, the giddy hope of the bread carriers, the manna eaters.

Until Home and Promised Land and complete clarity, I’m a wanderer crossing bridges, wanderer eating manna, eating mystery. For really, as long as I live, travel, is there ever anything else to eat? I either take the “what is it?” manna with thanks, eat the mystery of the moment with trust, and am nourished another day — or refuse it … and die. Jesus calls me to surrender and there’s nothing like releasing fears and falling into peace. It terrifies, true. But it exhilarates. This, this is what I’ve always wanted and never knew: this utter trust, this enlivening fall of surrender into safe hands.

There is no joy without trust!

I can feel all the sinews releasing, the opening of the heart chambers, the unfurling of a life into one reverberating, exultant yes!

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Yes in Christ!

To the enfleshed Yes who said yes to this moment and yes to last year’s illness and yes to the cracks of my childhood and yes to the nail and yes to my name in the Book of Life, hear me say YES!

The power of sin and death and fear-sent-from-the-Enemy are forever ended because we can trust in the bridge even if it’s caving, in God even when it’s black, in manna nourishment even when we don’t know what it is. The God whom we thank for fulfilling the promises of the past will fulfill His promises again.

In Christ, the answers to the questions of every moment are always Yes!

Lord God, Bread of Life, not only do You nourish me, but in thanking You for the nourishing, that thanks itself becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes — because thanks is what feeds our trust. When I am soul-starved today, Lord, remind me that every feast begins with the word thanks.