Hungering for the God Who Became Breadনমুনা

Introduction

Fellow pilgrim and God-seeker:

Have you ever hungered so much it hurt?

I did. I starved myself for four years and nearly died. I was hungry for love and for Jesus and for everything to make sense.

Now I’m so full I can’t help but feed others.

I don’t have all the answers, but I know the One who does; and I hope, in the coming devotionals, to help you taste the God who became bread and wine and life for you.

I’ve divided these devos into five sections: “The Table,” “The Hunger,” “The Feast,” “The Feeding,” and “Koinonia.”

The final section, “Koinonia,” is all about the ultimate feast, Communion—the Lord’s Supper—and the depth of what this means for us ragged sinners saved by grace.

As we gather around the table, I pray your appetite will be awakened. I pray the more you partake, the more you will hunger for the only One who can truly fill. I pray you’ll become glutted on God’s goodness, then turn and feed this living Bread to a very hungry world.

Come with me to the table, friends. A meal awaits. Let’s dig in.

Love, e.

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Day 1: The Table

Daily Bread

Psalm 81:10–12

John 6:32–59

1 Corinthians 11:17–34

*****

I’m not sure when the Communion table stopped being the center of the church, but when I went as a child, the pulpit seemed the main attraction. And I went a lot. I was a pastor’s kid.

I went, and I hung my legs off the church pews and stared at the white minister’s collar my dad wore, and I thought it made him look like a doctor, like he was there to fix all our hurts and pains. And I thought maybe a table should, in fact, be there too, so we could be examined on it, each one of us. But all we had were little glass cups filled with watery juice and dry cubes of bread and a man named Jesus whose face I couldn’t see.

Have you ever longed to see Jesus, friend? I did. I spent hours squinting my eyes, trying to see Him.

If the church had a table, I thought it should be circular, so we could all sit together and look directly into each other’s faces and see the funny way our Adam’s apples moved up and down while we ate the bread and drank the juice, but Mum told me we were supposed to just think about God and not each other.

But I wonder if this is entirely true. Because even as I grew, and my swinging feet touched the floor, I began to see Jesus in the faces around me. And whenever we had a potluck in the downstairs basement with all the triangle-shaped sandwiches, their crusts cut off, and the men and women sang grace and we laughed around the table, I saw Him there too.

In the New Testament, believers met together for love feasts to celebrate an agape kind of love in which we die for one another. I know it’s not the same as Communion, but I wonder, friend, is it not more similar than we think?

Too often maybe we get stuck staring at each other’s Adam’s apples instead of seeing the way Jesus shines out of someone’s eyes or hearing how He chuckles out of their throats. And maybe that’s why the table has stopped being the center of the church.

But the good thing about a round table is that it doesn’t end. It welcomes us into the eternal goodness of God, an agape love that invites us to open our mouths agape—gaping wide—and let Him fill them with Himself. Because He’s the real food and real drink. Let’s come to His table.

Table Talk

Hi friend. What is church for you? What is Communion for you? Do you long for it to be more? Are you weary of the honey wafer manna? Do you hunger for intimacy with the real food and real drink? Spend time in the Word, with the Word, today. Ask Him to open your mouth wide, agape, so He can fill you. Ask Him to reveal Himself as bread and wine. Ask Him to reveal where there may be disunity between you and another believer today, so the table can be healed, so the love can be eternal and lasting. I’m excited to dine here with you on these triangle-shaped sandwiches and this great Almighty God.

Prayer

Dear Abba Father, we come to You today as the hungry and the forgetful. So quickly, we forget that You are enough and that all we need is to ask You to fill us. So, please come, Lord Jesus. Come and fill every empty, aching place in us. Please uproot all bitterness and anger and replace them with the bigness of Your love. We desire You, the True Manna, the True Drink. Teach us to feast and to be filled. In all our brokenness, we thank You, and we receive. In Jesus’s precious name, amen.