Real Food

Autumn 2024 Meditation

by Jessamyn Rains

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.--Isaiah 55:2

Some of my friends are really conscientious about the foods they consume and feed their families. They grow their own food, buy organic, grind their own wheat, drink raw milk, and have a deep and wide knowledge about medicinal foods and herbs.

I, on the other hand, have been more inclined to frequent Taco Bell and McDonald’s, and to consume certain cheap food items, like off-brand Cheerios and Ramen noodles.

But there is an inevitable rubbing-off that takes place when you hang around people, and having children does change the way you look at things.

So it is with this shifting lens, this slightly-altered consciousness, that I walked the food aisle of Dollar General recently. I was amazed at what I saw: so much food that wasn’t food at all. Food that was broken-down, fragmented, extracted, re-configured, re-packaged.

It might more accurately be called “food product.” or “food-ish.” Perhaps “food-esque.”

Thanks to technology, we are adept at tearing up perfectly good stuff nature created. Then we realize our mistake and try desperately to put back in what we took out.

Hence, we have Wonder Bread, fortified with vitamins.

Similarly, technology has broken down and repackaged our relationships. Social media is, arguably, the junk-food-ification of friendship. Though many good interactions happen via social media, often they are the white bread version: missing the bran and roughage and the nutrients we could actually use. No wonder people are relationally and mentally sick and lonely.

We are in need of whole relationships in our culture today. We need face-to-face interactions. Perhaps we need to spend enough time with people to get a little annoyed by them, to be challenged by their different personalities and values and points of view.

So much more important than our use of foods and technology is the issue of our spiritual nourishment. When Jesus was fasting in the desert, and the devil tempted Him to turn stones into bread, He responded, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

I remember a letter my husband wrote me back when we were pen pals: he said he loved the Bible because “it is so unmanageable.” Human beings have attempted to manage the Bible—to break it down, fragment it, reconfigure it, to explain it away—even to destroy it.

Yes, the Bible is hard to understand at times. We have to grapple with it. It confronts our modern values and sensibilities. It confronts our selfishness, our self-righteousness.

People have twisted it, weaponized it, misused it.

But what if, in spite of all this, God’s Word in its entirety is the thing we need more than anything else? What if it was designed—in its entirety—for our nourishment, our edification?

Isaiah 55:2 asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” The context for this verse is an invitation for each of us to leave our sinful pursuits behind, to quit consuming that which makes us sick, and to receive God’s nourishing Word instead, which He offers freely.

Too late in life I have recognized that so many of my sorrows and regrets could have been avoided if I had only taken heed of God’s Word.

But even now, I turn to the Word and to Christ Himself–the Bread of Life–so that I can find the nourishment my soul so desperately needs.