We were traveling on Christmas Day a few years ago. We hadn’t really planned out the trip that well, we just packed our bags and went. Around dinner time the kids started to get hungry and we realized we hadn’t packed any snacks. A small riot was forming in the back of the car and it was on me to find a place to eat. Every exit we stopped at the stores and restaurants were all closed. Finally we found a gas station that had a few chicken fingers left and we paid a small fortune for hardened, rubberized chicken that had been under the heat lamps all day. It was so bad, that as hungry as we were, we couldn’t even really eat them.

Jesus talks a lot about food and drink in the chapters we read today. I couldn’t help but think of Isaiah 55. Jesus uses the metaphors of food and water to illustrate our need for Him. We are hungry and we search in vain for ways to fill the hunger in our life. Often what we end up with, just simply isn’t enough.

Jesus tells the woman at the well to get her husband and then reveals that she has had 5 husbands and the man she was with now wasn’t her husband. She was trying to quench her spiritual thirst with broken relationships. He asked the man at the pool if he wanted to be well, the man had determined the bill for his healing was too high, there is no way he could get in the pool on time. Jesus accuses the crowd of following him for the wrong reasons, just to get a free lunch, he presses them to follow him for what he really came to do to meet their deepest needs.

We can go a few days without food but we can’t go a lifetime. The people that Jesus ministers to in this passage were hungry, but in order to be filled, they had to admit they were hungry and that they didn’t have what they needed to pay the bill but they could receive what Jesus offered freely.

You know, it’s not all that different today. Jesus is seeking people who are hungry. They’ve looked to other places to fill the void in their soul but nothing is open and those who claim they have food are only offering expensive and inedible knockoffs. The only one who has what we really need is Jesus and we can come to Him with faith and repentance. He will freely provide everything we need. Have you placed your faith in Him?

Prayer: Father, thank you that you have provided for us everything we need with Jesus. I pray that we would be humble to recieve you and satisfied in what you have done for us through the ressurection. I pray that you empower and embolden us as your people to share the messge of hope and joy that Jesus has come into the world and He is Bread from Heaven and he has Living Water! In Jesus Christ Name, Amen.