Trading Anxious Bread for the Bread of Life
Skip the bread. One more delicious food item is controversial. I am not a nutritionist, so you should probably check with someone more qualified before you eliminate bread from your diet. I don’t know about you, but it seems harder and harder to figure out what is good for you and what you are to avoid eating.
Watch your carbs, eat more protein, avoid gluten, don’t eat sugar, be a vegetarian, be a carnivore, drink a little wine for your stomach ache, don’t consume any alcohol. And whatever diet that you hear about, there is always someone who says, “The research shows…” That is, of course, until the research shows something else. I tend to default to moderation in all things and use common sense unless you have a known allergy or there is a specific health problem that necessitates the elimination of some particular food.
I will stop my rant and go back to why you should skip the bread. I don’t have any scientific research for my recommendation. Instead, I am going to invoke scripture. I will also share that it is a specific kind of bread that we are to avoid consuming. No, it’s not white bread, or wheat bread, or sourdough that we are to avoid. Psalm 127 is clear that there is no benefit to eating “the bread of anxious toil.”
This wonderful little psalm begins with a construction tip before we get to our diet plan, calendar, and sleep schedule. Psalm 127 opens with this condition: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” You don’t need to fire your builder if you are in the middle of construction on you new home or doing a major renovation, but this psalm does bring us to a moment where we might benefit from an evaluation of how things are going with our lives in general.
The earlier we put this wisdom in place, the better off we will be. But don’t worry, even if you are in the fourth quarter or gun lap of life, there is still time to adjust. And the first and most important thing we must evaluate comes down to this question: Who or what is the foundation of your life?
We all have choices. We can choose to go it alone. We can choose to find a personal coach, a financial advisor, or some self-help guru to help us with our plans. And some of the advice we get from these sources may be just fine. But if you want a life that is filled with joy, peace, purpose, and longevity, then the best foundation is to build upon the foundation found in scripture.
At the end of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a very clear choice. We can build on rock, or we can build on sand. And the choice we make will determine the structural integrity of our lives. Solomon may have been the author of Psalm 127, and his advice is supported by Jesus and reaffirmed by the apostle Peter, who makes clear in his epistle that Jesus is the cornerstone of God’s divine plan and our lives in particular.
Without the Lord as the foundation of our lives, then what we do will have very limited results. The psalmist began his advice with having the Lord as our builder, and then it gets into our diet and our sleep issues. And here is the bottom line: it is worthless to devour the bread of anxious toil and get up early and stay up late trying to solve everything on our own when we have the assurance that if God watches over the sparrows, then he is fully capable of watching over us as well.
Our Father in heaven knows exactly what we need and promises that if we simply place our faith and trust in his hands, he will bring all of the resources of heaven straight to our hearts and minds, even today. So instead of snacking on anxious bread, maybe the better meal would be to consume the bread of life.
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’”
Father, today we surrender our lives to you. Forgive our foolish attempts to build our lives ourselves. Forgive us for the many times we have allowed our minds to run wild with anxious thoughts instead of trusting that you can and will calm our storms and provide for our every need. We love you and trust you to be our source of wisdom and the foundation of our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Your Time with God’s Word
Psalm 127:1-5; Matthew 7:24-27; John 6:35 ESV
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