This morning I ate a piece of Milton's bread with my coffee, and perhaps it is the best store-bought bread I've ever put in my mouth, a whole grain bread with black sesame seeds and a variety of textures and twice the calories of regular bread. I enjoy bread, daily. I'm on a high carb diet, making up for all the carnivores tipping the planet with their angus and jerky eating.
After all, Jesus teaches us to ask, in the Lord's Prayer (or Disciples' Prayer), for daily bread, not daily meat. My meaty tongue is in my cheek, but still it is true that bread is the chosen metaphor of the Lord and implied daily food of humanity.
Yet eating meat is not without significance. The Levites ate meat as part of the sin offering. Israel ate their share of the fellowship or well-being offerings as joyful celebration of God and the community.
The idea of daily bread takes on incredible importance, however, in that we are a people who have been given manna from heaven, the sun, water, air, bread from the ground. And bread is a vital part of passover, the Lord's Supper, and it is not only a symbol but a real food that we put in our mouths as we remember that Jesus is the living word, the bread of life.
I'll close with a poignant quote from St. Francis of Assisi about bread and God:
Surely we cannot be left unmoved by loving sorrows for all this; in his love, God gives himself into our hands; we touch him and receive him daily into our mouths.
9:20:24 AM 
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