Once a week I drive a bread route through the wine country.  I get up on Friday morning at 2am and drive to the bakery in Sonoma to load up the fresh bread and then head out to various stores to deliver it.  If you have never been inside a bakery that produces amazing sourdough bread, you don’t know what you are missing.  The smells are unbelievable!  And when it comes right out of the oven you wish you could grab a stick of butter and an entire loaf and just go for it.  I can honestly say that this special Basque bread is some of the best I have ever tasted.  It is sooooo good!

 

This bread is delivered daily; there is a desire for it each and everyday.  The bakery bakes each day of the year with the exception of Christmas Day.  It truly is “daily bread”. 

 

While driving the bread to Calistoga one Friday morning I had a bit of an insight.  We are designed for fresh bread every single day.  What I mean by that is that we are literally in need of having food every single day.  We can go without for a period of time, but our bodies are created in such a way so as to need the energy that food gives us.  And if you think about it that way, then it is not only daily bread, but life bread. 

 

In John 6:35 Jesus says this: “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry…”  Bread was a staple food in those days.  All who heard this understood what bread was for people.  And here is Jesus saying that He is the Bread of Life.  Later, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, one of the things He tells them to pray is, “Give us this day, our daily bread.”

 

It isn’t difficult to see that we are designed for fresh bread…for daily bread.  Jesus wants to connect deeply with us and we need to connect deeply with Him.  This really is a relationship.  He wants us to take of this bread…the bread of life…or more simply, Himself!  How do we do that?

 

I want to hear from you.  Tell me what you do to connect with God everyday.  I want to hear the great stories of how you engage in relationship with Him.  Share a story of a watershed moment for you in this regard, or when you finally sort of “got it” that you need fresh bread everyday.  Tell me your story…and share it with all of us.  Maybe it came out of a painful time or even a remarkable victory. I am looking forward to hearing from you!

 

By the way, if you actually scratched and sniffed the computer screen where the image of bread is….fess up and let me know.  You can comment on all of this below.