Mom! I’m going through milk withdrawal!’ I walk in the kitchen and see one manchild leaning halfway in the fridge, both doors open wide. ‘Milk withdrawal, huh? That sounds rough.’

I put the pile of books on the counter. Pick up a dirty dish, two mugs and a glass and carry them to the sink. Another manchild, sitting across the kitchen, shoves a whole waffle in his mouth, maple syrup dripping from his fork. ‘It IS rough. Twelve hours without milk. Twelve whole hours!’ I shake my head, smiling. Get the baking sheet out, the cutting board and the bag of potatoes. ‘How are we out of milk?? Didn’t I just get three whole gallons less than a week ago?’

First manchild piles waffles on his plate, shrugs shoulders and continues, ‘Man cannot live by bread alone!’

I chuckle and it’s true: man cannot live by bread alone. But there is a different kind of bread, a living bread that sustains life itself. All other bread we eat is dead.

I get the chicken out of the package and put it in the baking sheet. I have to bake till it reaches 165 degrees, or it is not safe to eat. And I see the refrigerator full of food. Food that has to be cooked at high temperatures, stored at low temperatures and sealed well. And even then, this dead food has a half-life and it’s on its way to turning back to the dirt where it came from.

I have said it before, standing right here barefoot in this kitchen. Why in this round and round world do these bodies of ours need to consume so much food? And who even decided it needed to be three times a day? Because I feel like I have spent a lifetime chopping, dicing, sauteing, baking, boiling, mixing and stirring. Doing what exactly? Cooking dead food so we can consume it with bodies that will also die?

The thing is, I often come to the One that makes all bread like this: wanting bread but not living bread. I want Him to provide, but not always the sustenance that brings life. There is a way to want life and not want the One that gives it. I am often no different than the ones that got on the boat and followed Him to the other side of the lake, desperate for nutrition … only to hear Him say: ‘unless you eat living bread, you will not live’. It can be too much to eat this living bread. Who can swallow this?

This bread does not lure your senses with the smell and aroma that tickle nerve endings making mouths water. It might even burn on its way down, and change, and transform you from within, the way living food transforms a body at the cellular level. But it will satiate you something deep.

You might even wonder why you ever craved the hollow calories of the dead stuff. The superficial stuff. The shallow substitutes.

Because this bread fills you up in ways you longed for, but didn’t know were possible. It doesn’t just tease your taste buds with empty calories, it fills your soul with sustenance, nutrition. It will breathe new life and you might not have even known you were dying. But now, you can live. Fully live. Not just for a day to come, but for today.

This bread is not the kind you get by the sweat of your brow. It is not earned by putting in the forty hours plus overtime. The only way to get this bread is to receive it. To put out your hands, palms up and surrendered.

Later that day, after the table has been cleaned off and the dishwasher is humming slow, someone says, ‘Are we picking up milk tomorrow?’ Yes, we are picking up milk tomorrow. And potatoes and chicken too. Because we will be hungry again for dead food to stay alive.

But really, what these bodies of ours, these souls breathed into dirt, hunger for is living bread that keeps us living. The kind without an expiration date. The kind that you’ll want to feast on forever.