What God’s Word Says About Food Sýnishorn

If you’ve ever raised a mancub, you can empathize with my battle with the grocery budget. The cost to feed four sons (plus my husband and I) is truly staggering. In an average week, we go through two gallons of milk, six boxes of cereal, two loaves of bread, and four dozen eggs. We are blessed to have enough resources to feed them as often as they wish. My children have never experienced true hunger.

Still they wake up every morning worried they will have to.

“Mom, what’s for breakfast?”

“Mom, can I have a snack?”

“Mom, what’s for lunch?”

“Mom, what’s for dinner?”

Every road trip I hear the same worried question, often before our car has even left the driveway. “Buuuut what will weeee eaaaat?”

It’s funny and frustrating, but also, revealing. Do we have a constant, gnawing fear that this will be the day the Lord forgets about our needs or makes us go without?

In John 6:1-15, the crowds had seen that Jesus could do miracles (v. 2), but watching the work of the divine on behalf of someone else only increased their heart pangs. Surely each person wanted a miracle of their own. In this way, they are an archetype for us. We each have a longing, deep and urgent to have Jesus fill us up.

Before the approaching crowd reached Him and gathered to hear His hillside sermon, Jesus turned to His trusted disciple Philip and asked, “Where will we buy bread so that these people can eat?” (v. 5). As verse 6 tells us, Jesus didn’t pose the question because he did not know where to find food for the crowds, but rather to see if Philip knew where the provision would come from. The needs of the crowd weren’t a surprise to Jesus. Like a mom preparing snacks for a road trip, He knew they needed to be fed (v. 6).

Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn’t be enough for each of them to have a little.” (v. 7)

Philip had the facts right, but where was his faith? Even though he had witnessed many of Jesus’ miracles, he didn’t believe that Jesus could meet the scope of needs that were walking toward them. It just took a few hungry followers to expose the truth: Philip operated out of scarcity.

Scarcity, it seems, is part and parcel of being broken people in a broken world. My boys’ fear that they won’t have enough to eat isn’t based on experience. Sin has stamped a scarcity mindset onto their little hearts. And it’s stamped onto yours.

While the primary lesson of this story in John 6 is about Jesus Himself being our provision, let’s consider a secondary lesson. Let’s examine how our own attitudes toward food point toward wider issues of faith. What does chronic overeating say about our walk with the Lord? Or using food as a constant source of indulgence? Or fear of calories? Or obsession with eating organic? Or deep shame attached to that slice of cheesecake you ate last night? Often, these are not just food issues. These are faith issues—reminders that only Jesus can fully satisfy.

Jesus’ miracle here reveals more than Jesus’ ability to fill us up. It showcases that He can fill us to the point of overflow, and if we let it, it can shift our hearts from scarcity to abundance.