Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
He is the bread of life, Jesus tells the crowd in John 6:35. Stick with Him, and you will never lack food or water, not ever.
It’s a great promise, a promise even the most unscrupulous of politicians and businesses likely would
stop short of. Because there’s always a dependency as they say in the project management world, a manufacturing or delivery or execution link that could break down. There’s always something beyond their control.
There’s something beyond Jesus’s control too, which makes this promise all the more audacious.
To be fed by the Bread of Life, we have to not only come to Him. We have to stay with Him.
We have to stay with Him when we haven’t had the Eucharist for weeks. We have to stay with Him when the kids, spouses, and others with whom we live are working our last nerve. We have to stay with Him when Dad died a good death at a ripe old age, and there’s no way to have a funeral.
We have to stay with Him.
Jesus’s promise of nourishment can be fulfilled if and only if we do that. And perhaps what’s an even more audacious leap of faith, He believes we can.
