Reflection
Be gentle…when you touch bread.
Let it not lie…uncared for, unwanted.
So often…bread is taken for granted.
There is such beauty in bread;
beauty of sun and soil,
beauty of patient toil.
Wind and sun have caressed it.
Christ often blessed it.
Be gentle…when you touch bread.
Discovered next to a loaf of bread,
tucked in an alcove at Cartmel Priory, England
Bread for the Preacher, August 2009
Prayer
“May we who eat be bread for others.”
Action
Appreciate the nourishment of bread as a basic food throughout the ages. Enjoy the texture and smell of newly baked bread. Be grateful. Think of all those, especially children, who go to bed hungry because the money for their bread is spent on weapons or the luxuries possible for many of us at their expense. What can you do personally? Politically?
Bread for the World : http://www.bread.org/
Suggested Reading
Come, you who are blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat.
Matthew 25:34-35
When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, “Now is that political, or social?” He said, “I feed you.” Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.
Desmond Tutu
Hunger is not an issue of charity. It is an issue of justice.
Jacques Diouf
When we are rich and others are hungry or impoverished beyond description, justice calls for ending this imbalance.
Art Simon, Founder – Bread for the World
If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.
Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut
There is only one rule by which to judge if God is near us or is far away – the rule that God’s word is giving us today: everyone concerned for the hungry, the naked, the poor, for those who have vanished in police custody, for the tortured, for prisoners, for all flesh that suffers, has God close at hand. We have the ability, we have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth. We need only the will.
John F. Kennedy
Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.
Saint Augustine
I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one.
Mother Teresa
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Gandhi
The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.
M.F.K. Fisher