March 15

Bread from Heaven

I have meat to eat that ye know not of. — John 4:32

The disciples had left Jesus hungry when they went away to buy bread; they came back to find His hunger departed, and in these words we have the reason He gave for it. He was intently engaged in His Father’s work, doing His will, and in this He found perfect satisfaction. He had found spiritual refreshment, and His bodily weariness and hunger had vanished. His joy in saving a poor lost soul was so great that it made Him forget His hunger. But the joy was not the only food which Christ had; while doing His Father’s work special divine grace was imparted to Him from heaven, which nourished and strengthened Him. He literally fed on bread from heaven — spiritual bread.

We have other examples of the same. When He had gone through His sore temptation and was “an hungered,” we are told that angels came and ministered unto Him. In Gethsemane also, after His bitter agony, we read that there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Him. May we not suppose that always when He had any special service, costing Him an outlay of strength, spiritual refreshment was imparted to Him in some secret way by His Father?

Certainly we have the promise of this in our lives. When Paul asked that his trouble, his “thorn in the flesh,” might be removed, the answer was,” No: my grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” When we are united to Christ, our weakness to His strength, our emptiness to His fullness, for all our need there flows to us from Him a supply adequate to our want.

We see constant illustrations of this in our homes, where frail ones called to nurse the sick are sustained in a wonderful way through long, wearisome days and sleepless nights of vigil, as if nourished with supernatural food. They have meat to eat that others know not of. There flows from Christ’s fullness a strength for their need.