Never Hungry or Thirsty

While I was being prepared for this week’s trail walking, I was reminded of how we concluded our meditation last week on ‘Peace to the Weary’. Believe it or not, if the Spirit Himself had not reminded me, I would never have remembered all that I was given to write on the confident assurance we all have, who believe in the Lord.

Just to refresh your memory, we were receiving from the parable of the Persistent Widow, which Jesus told to show His disciples and us that we should pray and not give up. In conclusion, I offered you what I termed, the Always and Never of the one who is praying. You were encouraged, as long as you were praying in the Spirit’s will, to always pray and never give up. Then these were also stated. I list them before you again, knowing that the impact of NEVER, will be sharper, deeper and more lasting.

God is never like that uncaring judge. 

God will never keep putting off justice for His chosen ones – He will bring it about quickly.

God will never ignore those who are suffering and who keep calling on Him. 

God our Father, will never not give you His peace, if you earnestly seek it.

When I saw these, never facts, I was cemented even more firmly in stubborn, unwavering faith that this life-force of a word, never, with our Lord, is mystically translucent, yet powerfully transforming. You too will know this, perhaps not so much in your understanding, as in your life.   

We return to the words which made my friend exclaim with untainted awe and unbridled excitement. He means never! He really means never again! Does it mean for all times, never? You, and I are like my friend, for we say and think and respond the same way when this truth of Jesus hits us deep in the solar plexus, capturing us with unexplainable delight. 

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6: 35b.

Jesus holds Himself up before us as Bread. I am the Bread of life. Now bread is the most common, stable food there was in the time of Jesus. When Jesus was given food to feed the masses, we are told that on both recorded occasions, with the miraculous feeding of five thousand and of the four thousand, they all received a, bread and fish meal. We remember that when Jesus and His disciples were on the boat travelling to another place, they were quite concerned that they had forgotten to bring bread with them. Their food to take with them was not nuts, or dates or rice, but bread. When Jesus instituted the Last Supper, He used nothing else, from that celebratory Passover Table, but the bread. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Matthew 26: 26.

However, when Jesus makes this claim on what is so ordinary, so very well used, so unsophisticated, so plain, so grass-roots, He changes it completely. He makes the natural supernatural, bringing life to the stationary. Jesus does not tell us in this passage that He is the Bread, No! A million times, no! Jesus is most specific and projective in His Words. He is the Bread of Life. In John 6: 51a, we also hear Jesus saying, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. Aren’t you too being made aware of this fact also? Anyone who eats Jesus, the Bread of Life, the Living Bread, will never die?

Keep us there, Holy Spirit, keep us there. Amen!

Now that Jesus has put this living image of Himself before us, He makes two never promises which must capture us and we certainly cannot contain them on our own.

Let’s pull up a bit and look at this sales-pitch which most of us, if not all of us have proven. There’s the store’s advertisement for all and sundry, no discriminations whatsoever. Buy one, get one free. So, you go to the store and you buy one lightbulb, but you leave the store with two lightbulbs. You are the living testimony of the truth of what was published or advertised. There is the statement of condition – Buy one. There is the satisfaction of commitment, you receive one free. I ask you, if human beings, unscrupulous as we can be, can be proven by us, to be true in their words, how much more Jesus?   

Jesus’ Statement of Condition - Come to Me. You must come to Jesus, just as you must leave your place and go to the store for the offer.

Your Satisfaction of Commitment – You will never go hungry again. You will leave your place of prayer, meditation, waiting and more, fully satisfied, never to be hungry again.

The other half of the published words of Jesus carries the exact weight.

 Jesus’ Statement of Condition – Believe in Me. You must believe in Jesus and all that He says to you, just as you go to the store, believing its offer.

Your Satisfaction of Commitment - You will never be thirsty. You will leave your present place of thirst, happy and fully quenched, never to be thirsty again.

Never will you go hungry, I am life’s Bread,

You will not be in want when I have you fed,

Never will you know e’en the taste of hunger,

Want and lack of food, will plague you no longer. Amen!