Hi Friends,

My youngest son started praying a specific prayer before dinner. It’s a very important prayer, especially if you’re seven. It goes something like: “God, help these calories give us the energy we need to have fun!”

Jesus pointed us to the source of vitality—spiritual calories to keep our hearts pumping, eyes clear, and feet walking the narrow way—and it’s this:

“Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

The apostle John and the prophet Ezekiel were each handed a book and instructed, not to read it as you might think, no they are told to eat the book.

The word of God is meant to be ingested. It involves wrestling it down with our teeth. Taking it in, turning it over, savoring, digesting, returning to it again and again.

This is how we “taste and see that He is good” (Psalm 34:8).

Rainer Maria Rilke describes the reader as one who “does not always remain bent over his pages; he often leans back and closes his eyes over a line he has been reading again, and its meaning spreads through his blood”.

Yes, these words of life must hit our bloodstream. They must become the fuel that moves us through the world, powering what we say, and the ways we see and reach and care. Compassion, justice, worship—it’s all fueled by the bread of the Word of God.

It hits our blood, and we are moved.

Just as food is a matter of vitality or starvation, our life depends upon what we do with these words. No, simply reading them would never be enough. We have to take it in.

Thank you, God, for your Word. It is our daily bread.

–Anna

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