Bread
One of my favourite things when it comes to snacking is an unconventional one. While many love to snack on fruits, nuts and chips (including myself), I love to snack on pita bread. Especially with hummus (with olive oil). I love having it on any time of the day. I love having it after dinner while watching TV or even during dinner with my family. If you haven’t gotten the memo yet, I love pita and hummus.
It definitely can be attributed to my upbringing. I grew up in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East —sometimes called Khubz, where Mediterranean cuisine originates from — and pita bread (sometimes called Khubz) and hummus is a common staple in the dishes that they serve there, just like how rice is a staple for Filipinos. As far as I can remember growing up, once (or twice…or…) every week my dad would buy food from restaurants and takeaway joints on the way home, and we would have dinner like that weekly. Whether it be shawarma, falafel or fried or rotisserie-style chicken, each dish would come with pita and a side of hummus and garlic sauce. Even after moving to Canada, I am so happy that this country’s diversity allows for easy access to pita. I especially love going to places such as Adonis and Paramount Fine Foods (the sit-down joints, not the takeaway ones, by the way) for pita. Adonis’ pita breads are hands down the best pita I’ve ever had. Me and my dad would normally venture down there and just grab a couple — okay, maybe more — of their in-house baked pita bread. If you come at the right time, they will have freshly baked pita in their bakery section (don’t even get me started with the amazing smell of the bread! I miss it so much.) Their pita is just so soft yet tough enough to enjoy. Even after a few days, their pita bread is still soft! For whenever I am able to visit and have a sit-down meal with my family at Paramount, one of my favourite things they do there is that they give you a free basket of freshly baked pita as an appetizer. It is so fresh that the pita bread is still inflated and has not flattened to what you would normally know pita to be. It will still be steaming hot, but you can enjoy it even without any dip whatsoever. We would go through a basket in minutes, that even before our order comes in, we would be asking for another basket.
Just reading all of what I just wrote just now, I laugh at myself as I continue to write…as it sounds so ridiculous. But as you can see, the humble pita bread has become part of my identity and who I am.
I have been reflecting and meditating on my walk with Jesus during these times, and while I am doing so, the image of bread is everywhere. Not just the delicious, sustaining ones that we all know and crave as buttered toast or hummus-dipped pita, but also symbolic ones. I even realized how in Jesus’ time, pita bread already existed! In The Lord’s Prayer, we hear Jesus teaching us to pray “give us this day, our daily bread.” While many would understand that as praying for blessing from God to provide us sustenance and food, it also doubly serves as asking God for our mental — spiritual — nourishment through God’s word in our daily lives. Just like how bread provides us the carbohydrates to give us energy with our physical bodies, it refers to having the supplement to give us Jesus’ blessed grace, strength and energy to face the challenges of our daily lives. So what and where can one get their portion of their daily bread?
Simple, it’s the Bible! The Bible is God’s Word, and I personally have been strengthened mentally and spiritually through the Living Word of God. There is so much wealth of wisdom and knowledge in there that I can take and apply to my life, and it just simply fits whenever I partake on the Bread of Life.
During His first time here on earth, Jesus started off His ministry by fasting for forty days and nights. During that time, He was tempted by the devil numerous times to abandon His mission and succumb to His flesh, but Jesus sturdily countered with the Scriptures, with one being:
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ”
— Matthew 4:4 (NKJV)
Here, Jesus clearly energized and strengthened His faith and determination to go against the temptations by going into God’s Word by quoting from the Old Testament scriptures, specifically in the book of Deuteronomy during Moses’ time. He goes on to fight off the devil by doing the same thing over and over again until He triumphs against it.
Later on during His ministry, Jesus refers to Himself as:
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
— John 6:35 (NKJV)
Right before He went on to fulfill His sacrificial grace on the cross, He spent the Jewish tradition of Passover with His disciples on His last night and broke bread with them. He symbolically referred to the broken bread as His body, which will eventually be broken severely by the scourging that He will receive and His eventual death on the cross. He also symbolically referred to the cup of wine as His blood that He will also eventually shed in the cross soon after. He brought this up as a way to remind us of His grace and the forgiveness of our sins and the healing — both mentally and physically — of who we are in Him.
As I write and reflect on this, just being able to remind myself of His everlasting love towards me and you gives me encouragement and strength to face life one day at a time and not be shaken by the thoughts of what tomorrow would bring. Our Daily Bread is Jesus and His words of Life. Even in His prayer, Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread — to live one day at a time and not worry, and to feed ourselves with God’s divine knowledge.
Whenever I feel anxiety and begin to feel worried about the things that I do not have control over, I just reflect on the Daily Bread that I have in the Bible and in Jesus. I say a simple prayer and reflect to one of the countless things the Lord Jesus says in the Bible, and the proverbs and psalms that God has given us as promises.
Just like how a baker goes through the process of making and kneading the dough and putting it through intense heat to bake and become bread, the process itself is the same for our lives. It symbolically points to how we can rise and grow; that when we let Jesus be the centre of our lives, He will shape us to be who we are in God’s purpose with our lives. But without heat and fire — hardship and challenges — we cannot learn and fully grow and become strong until we are able to apply God’s word onto our lives to become tough and firm against what is in front of us.
Now I know that the Bible can be daunting to some. I know this to be the case, because I thought the same thing my whole entire life. The heavy literary nature of it can sometimes appear challenging to some to even approach it; with all of its rich poetry, epics and symbolisms. But as I grew stronger with my walk with Jesus, I realized that it is not about reading the whole entire Bible from cover to cover, as it is the only book that you will never finish due to the layers upon layers of nuggets and wisdom you can get from it. Rather, it is all about your heart and hunger for Jesus and God. In the early days of the church, many people do not know how to read, so many would gather and listen to someone who would read the Bible out to them. Apostle Paul, Jesus’ servant of grace, wrote to the church in Rome:
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
— Romans 10:17 (NKJV)
When you yearn for God, He will come to you. It’s just that simple.
As of late, how I have been strengthening myself with the Daily Bread has simply been through daily devotionals. One very popular devotional is one that is gracefully named Our Daily Bread. Their phone app is an amazing tool to get your daily portion of God’s bread, and has been a staple to not only me but my family all these years.
But if you’re like me who is a visual person and can’t go deep without losing focus when reading a book, one of my ultimate favourite places to get my Daily Bread on is through the amazing people at The Bible Project. They have created so much visually stunning animated videos to simplify what the Bible is all about, which can be found in their YouTube channel. They have been so instrumental in my learning of the Bible and Jesus’ Gospel without the tough digestion that reading normally entails. Their main mission is to make the Bible as accessible to anyone as possible, and to show that, from page one to its final word, the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. I have also recently started using their phone app to read the Bible, and the journey in reading and learning the Scriptures is nothing short of fun with what they have outlined in the app, so I highly encourage you to check them out! Below is just one of their many amazing video resources:
Now, before I head on over to the kitchen and grab me some pita and hummus, let me just say that having a relationship and fellowship with Jesus is all soever simple. Despite what your idea of what religion has imprinted on you; Jesus is not a religion, but as a relationship. It is up to you to search and learn more about Him. It is not up to me or anyone to tell you what to do, but just like when you pass by the bakery, you have the choice to go in and get some bread. You also have the many choices of what kind of bread you can go for, or just bypass the bakery entirely. But if you do feel like having more of the Bread of Life, you can simply just pray this simple prayer with all of your heart:
Lord Jesus, I do not know everything there is to life, and that I am but an imperfect, sinful person who do not deserve Your love and grace, but I do believe that You have died for me on the cross, and have victoriously defeated death by resurrecting from the grave. I do believe with my heart that You have shed Your blood and had Your body broken for me and that Your grace has now guaranteed me eternal life with You. My human logic can never make sense of it all, but Your love — through the Holy Spirit — has given me faith to know that I am saved, and loved, and that my sins are no more before God, and that I am forever saved and awaiting an eternal life with You. In Jesus’ precious name I pray, Amen.
And that’s all there is too it for now! Now grab some snacks and get reading — or listening…or watching! Stay snackin’ — literally and spiritually — and stay blessed.
Send me an email if you would like to talk at: jemuel.datiles@gmail.com.
