A Feast of Love

As we start this New Week with only one more week left in this month before we head into the 11th month of the New Year, Yes November is just around the corner but let us not get ahead of ourselves I want us to take a moment to reflect on these words of wisdom and let us walk in an attitude of Love with I am the living bread that came down from heaven. John 6:51 READ JOHN 6:47–59 In the Danish film Babette’s Feast, a French refugee appears in a coastal village. Two elderly sisters, leaders of the community’s religious life, take her in, and for fourteen years Babette works as their housekeeper. When Babette comes into a large sum of money, she invites the congregation of twelve to join her for an extravagant French meal of caviar, quail in puff pastry, and more. As they move from one course to the next, the guests relax; some find forgiveness, some find love rekindled, and some begin recalling miracles they’d witnessed and truths they’d learned in childhood. “Remember what we were taught?” they say. “Little children, love one another.” When the meal ends, Babette reveals to the sisters that she spent all she had on the food. She gave everything—including any chance of returning to her old life as an acclaimed chef in Paris—so that her friends, eating, might feel their hearts open. Jesus appeared on earth as a stranger and servant, and He gave everything so that our spiritual hunger might be satisfied. In John’s gospel, He reminds His listeners that when their ancestors wandered hungry in the wilderness, God provided quail and bread (Exodus 16). That food satisfied for a time, but Jesus promises that those who accept Him as the “bread of life” will “live forever” (John 6:48, 51). His sacrifice satisfies our spiritual cravings. By Amy Peterson REFLECT & PRAY Jesus, thank You for giving Your body and blood for us. How has God satisfied your hunger? What might it look like for you to give sacrificially? SCRIPTURE INSIGHT Of all the “signs” (miracles) Jesus performed, John only records seven that point to Jesus as God’s Son (John 20:30-31). The miracle of the multiplication of the fish and loaves in 6:1-14 is one of those. (It also appears in the other gospels—Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17.) The additional miracles John includes are changing water into wine (2:1-11), healing the official’s son (4:46-54), healing the paralyzed man (5:1-15), walking on water (6:16-21), healing the man born blind (9:1-7), and raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-45). Arthur Jackson