Bread of Life

I started the new year wanting to learn something new, so I overcame the intimidation of sourdough and dove right in. Despite the short list of ingredients, I found myself eager to give it a go and probably mess it up. I was quite literally drowning in sourdough the first week because I was feeding a very happy starter that loved to bubble up and over whatever container I thought would contain it.

Kierstie Renninger

When I began the process for my first loaf, I had researched many different recipes, and I combined a few different methods and adapted the ratios to a rhythm I thought I could maintain. After attempting a simple scoring design, I popped it in the oven and waited patiently. There was a lot of joy when something beautiful and delicious emerged. Delight in the creation. It turns out, there’s something really relaxing and restoring about bread making. Simple, ordinary, rhythm. Imagine God’s delight in the creation of each of us … God is joyful.

Throughout John’s witness, Jesus proclaims that He is the Bread of Life, and that God’s bread gives life to the world. Bread is sustaining, and bread is to be shared. We have a spiritual hunger only satisfied through Jesus. God’s love is unconditional and, in a grateful response, we can share that love with our neighbors and the world. When we seek community with one another, we can experience God in new ways and grow deeper in our connection to the one who sustains us.

Jesus isn’t the quick rise bread, He is the sustaining bread of life. Nurturing a relationship with God isn’t a one and done… it’s finding ways to intentionally seek God in our everyday rhythms and routines. My encouragement to each of us this week is to invite Jesus into the ordinary and seek God amidst our joys and burdens. God is with us.

So, friends, eat the bread. Share the bread.

In His Name, Kierstie

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