House of Bread

This article is copied from an unknown source entitled, “The House of Bread”, but I had to share it, especially at Christmas.

It was a mystery that had the added benefit of a midday snack. We were sitting on the desert sand when the teacher offered me some bread, which I accepted.

“Lechem,” he said. “It’s Hebrew for bread. The word is used in Jewish prayers to represent food and sustenance. Why do you think bread is so important?”

“Because it’s the ‘staff of life.’ It’s a basic necessity. It sustains us. It keeps us alive. It’s what we need.”

“That’s correct,” he said. “In Hebrew, the word for place or house is beit. When you put beit together with lechem, you get beit lechem, which would mean…”

“The place of bread or the house of bread.”

“And what would you expect to find in the house of bread?”

“Bread…of course.”

“You’d expect to find bread, the staff of life, in the house of bread. You’d expect to find that which sustains you, what you need above all things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Only because you don’t recognize it yet.”

‘”Recognize what?”

“Beit lechem, the house of bread. You already know it. You call it Bethlehem.”

“Bethlehem!” I said. “The house of bread! And so it’s there that we find the bread, that which we need most, that which sustains us, our most basic necessity, the staff of life…in Bethlehem!”

“Yes,” said the teacher, “so if what we need most is money, if money is the bread of our lives, then what we’d find in Bethlehem, the house of bread, would be money. If what we needed was success, then we’d find success there. Or if it was acceptance or pleasures or substances or careers or possessions or any other thing we desired…if any of these were what we needed most, then that’s what we would have found in Bethlehem. But we didn’t find any of those things there. What is it that we find in Bethlehem?”

“Him.”

“Him. Yes. We find God come down into our lives. So what does that reveal?”

“That more than anything else…we need Him.”

“Yes. What we find in the house of bread …is the Bread of Life.”

Stop filling your needs and desires with that which is not bread. Fill your heart with the love, the presence, and the fullness of your true bread-Him.

“Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly,truly I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.‘ Then they said to Him, ‘Lord, always give us this bread.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.‘” John 6:32-35

“‘I am the bread of life.‘” John 6:48

“But as for you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity.” Micah 5:2

Too, King David came from Bethlehem as well. “Now the LORD said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go, I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.'” 1 Samuel 16:1

This Christmas, remember we have been given the greatest gift of all, Emmanuel, God with us, born of a virgin in Bethlehem…Jesus, the bread of life.