In honor of my Lord and Savior: The bread of life

"Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I main gain Christ and be found in him." -Philippians 3:7-9

I come from a family of five. Growing up we shared many memorable times sitting around the dinner table. Those are treasured memories for me. And in several thousand of those meals never once did I question whether there would be food on the table. Today I watched as a family of five gathered for a family meal. However, they weren't gathering around a table, and the food they were about to eat could hardly be called a meal. Together they were digging through garbage in the middle of town looking for something to eat. We pulled up next to this family in our truck as we were delivering meals throughout the town of Matagalpa, Nicaragua. When asked what they were doing they told us they were looking for something to eat. After we prayed for this family we gave them each a meal that we had prepared. With smiles on their faces they thanked us as we drove away.
As we left the thought occurred to me that I had more in common with that family than I first realized. I have on countless occasions dug through a pile of garbage to fill myself when there was a perfectly good meal available to me that I was simply unaware of. Jesus declared in John 6:35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never go thirsty." But it is not until we have tasted the bread of life that we will ever consider what we had previously gained to be garbage, as Paul states in the passage above. The problem isn't that there are billions of people on this earth digging through garbage to be filled as much as that they don't even realize what they're gaining is actually garbage. I praise Jesus that he sought to fill the void I have as I so hopelessly attempted to fill it with the trash of this world.
Many reading this might hesitate to refer to anything outside of Christ to be "garbage". Maybe someone's thinking 'what about filling that void in my life with a spouse'? What about filling that void in my life with a family? Are those things garbage? My response would be that they are a small portion of the blessing it is to be found in Christ, a small temporary portion that cannot fill an eternal void within. I praise God for my friends and family, but when it comes time for me to call on someone come judgement day, I will not be calling on my dad, my mom, my brother, or my sister. I will be calling on my Savior Jesus Christ, as I hope and pray is the case for all that are reading this today.

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