A Poem, A Proverb, A Painting, A Prayer: A Lenten Journey--- Day 30: Thursday after the 4th Sunday in Lent

Today’s Theme: Bread of Life


Poem: I Am the Bread of Life
Where to get bread? An ever-pressing question
That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers,
Bread for their families, bread for all these others;
A whole world on the margin of exhaustion.
And where that hunger has been satisfied
Where to get bread? The question still returns
In our abundance something starves and yearns
We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied.

And then comes One who speaks into our needs
Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish
Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish
Whose words unfold in us like living seeds
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.
-------------Malcolm Guite (1954- ), English priest, poet, musician, and public theologian


Proverb:
“In an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the Bread of Life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”
----------------- Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019), Christian apologist, author, blogger, and columnist


Painting: Bread of Life, by Jorge Cocco Santangelo (1936- ), Argentina

      


Prayer: Fed by the Bread of Life
God of Mercy, we praise You and bless You
for abiding with us always,
in gratitude and awe for your saving deeds in our lives.

Bread of Life,
you nourish us and sustain us ever with your love,
sweeter than honey on the tongue.
May we look with eyes of wonder today
on the glory of your handiwork, O Holy One,
remembering that you have knit us together
as one body, one community
regardless of our differences.

Blessed Savior, help us to see deeper
into the mystery of your abundant grace,
and lift each other over the hindrances that impede us.

Gather into your embrace
all whose hope is in you, O Christ,
and grant your peace and comfort to those for whom we pray.
Amen.
-------------Leslie Barnes Scoopmire