The food on which he...
Illustration
Object:
The food on which he feeds us is bread: the ordinary stuff of life. Here is how it comes to
be here.
That bread comes from stalks of wheat, harvested from out of the field. The wheat is cut down in its prime by a sharpened blade. The severed remains of the plant are then gathered up, and flailed and winnowed until the kernels emerge. Those kernels are then carried to a central place and brutally crushed between two millstones.
The product that remains, in a humble pile on the mill floor, is the fine white powder we call flour. But it's not over yet. After this ordeal, the flour is mixed with other ingredients. The mixture is kneaded and rolled out flat. Then, it is subjected to the intense heat of the baker's oven. In the fiery darkness it rises, transformed -- emerging at the last as a crusty, brown loaf, fit to nourish the children of God.
Is there a better symbol of the brokenness of this human life of ours -- the brokenness and yet the emerging wholeness -- than a humble loaf of bread?
That bread comes from stalks of wheat, harvested from out of the field. The wheat is cut down in its prime by a sharpened blade. The severed remains of the plant are then gathered up, and flailed and winnowed until the kernels emerge. Those kernels are then carried to a central place and brutally crushed between two millstones.
The product that remains, in a humble pile on the mill floor, is the fine white powder we call flour. But it's not over yet. After this ordeal, the flour is mixed with other ingredients. The mixture is kneaded and rolled out flat. Then, it is subjected to the intense heat of the baker's oven. In the fiery darkness it rises, transformed -- emerging at the last as a crusty, brown loaf, fit to nourish the children of God.
Is there a better symbol of the brokenness of this human life of ours -- the brokenness and yet the emerging wholeness -- than a humble loaf of bread?
