God Promises to Meet Us in Bread
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This devotion is taken from our 2025 Lent in a Box resource, Unbroken: A Living Faith created in partnership with The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf and grounded in the work of the Living Catechism Project. Each week's theme is based around one of the teachings of the Living Catechism. View the weekly videos and download the daily spiritual practices and reflections on this website.
Week 6 Theme: God meets us in bread, wine, and water
God promises to meet us in, with, and under simple elements of daily life. At a table that Jesus sets, God forgives us and feeds us with love eternal. In water and promise, God brings us to new life and breathes in us gifts that help the world. Through these ordinary elements, God does some truly extraordinary things. We can delight in God’s goodness and all across creation, seeing God in a beautiful sunset, the laugh of a small child, or the warmth of a fire, trusting we can always return to bread, wine, and water, where God will always be waiting for us.
Day One: God promises to meet us in bread
My spouse started baking bread from scratch while we were dating. It has been such a gift to have warm, homemade bread over the years. He brings his bread to holiday meals and dinner parties, and I take delight in watching people admire it and enjoy it. I let it be his thing until about a year ago. While he was traveling for work, I tried making ciabatta from scratch. I loved the ritual of it, how it took little bouts of attention over two days to tend to. I loved how such simple, elemental ingredients combine to create such a nourishing, comforting loaf. I loved watching my children hum over a warm piece of bread out of the oven and ask for more. In How to Eat, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “So in this slice of bread there is sunshine, there is cloud, there is the labor of the farmer, the joy of having flour, and the skill of the baker and then—miraculously! —there is the bread. The whole cosmos has come together so that this piece of bread can be in your hand.”
God promises to meet us in, with, and under simple daily elements like bread. The table is already set. The bread is already made. We simply get to receive God’s love and take it in like bread. We are forgiven and fed with eternal love. God’s love is sustaining and nourishing. It is the lifeforce underneath us that buoys us.
Sometimes we eat without even realizing we are eating. Sometimes we chew on our worries instead of chewing on food. And then other times we remember the magic of mindful eating. Call to mind a holistically nourishing meal. What did you eat? What did you drink? Where were you? Who were you with? What conversation happened over the course of breaking bread together?
Today, contemplate what really nourishes you. Ask yourself what you are hungry for in food and in life. When you eat, can you take time to eat mindfully, seeing your food, smelling it, feeling it in your mouth, tasting it, and noticing how it makes you feel? Taste the deliciousness of the moment. Take a moment to thank God for nourishing food and for forgiveness and eternal love that truly sustains us.
