I am not easily satisfied. Always asking the question, “There must be more?”, I continually move to the next thing. Rarely still. Rarely taking the time to enjoy the fruit that is before me—the Bread From Heaven who is continually feeding me and seeking to satisfy my every need.


I seek Him who seeks me.


You would think this would be a match made in heaven, but instead, like the crowd who jumped in boats when the miracle bread had been fully consumed, I don’t always fulfill my hunger for Him with His Bread. Instead, I consume social media, I consume material goods, I consume my own faith by enveloping it in worry. I consume cookies. If I strip another layer off it, there are ways in which I even consume others, drawing on them as a distraction from my hunger.


I feign faithfulness by making demands of my Father: “Show me a sign, Lord, and do it quickly.” I reach, and pry, and strive, and rationalize. I push, and prod, and complain, and capitulate to the enemy.


My Father knows my heart.
He knows my hunger.
He sees my restlessness.
He fulfills my need.


I sit here this morning steeped in His Bread of Life. The sun is warm and inviting. The air barely whispers through the leaves on the trees. A white butterfly floats past me and I can almost feel it softly brushing my cheek. My dog lay quietly sleeping at my feet.


Stillness.


His signs are in the stillness.
He satisfies in the stillness.
He sets His seal in the stillness.


Seal: a device or substance that is used to join two things together so as to prevent them from coming apart or to prevent anything from passing between them. (Via Oxford Languages)


The Father joins me by Jesus, to Him.
And then, His Spirit floods the gaps.


When I take a moment to look into the face of the One who satisfies, my desires for earthly satisfaction are washed away by His Spirit, returning me to the eternal fold of a unified relationship—kneaded into the dough of the Holy Trinity. And from here, I can rise into the works He desires from me.



Let us pray… My Jesus, draw me into the stillness. I repent for all the ways I have negotiated with You to perform my will. I repent for all the crooked paths I’ve travelled attempting to satisfy my hunger. Please Lord, prevent my heart from coming apart from my Father’s. Let nothing pass between us. Satisfy my soul by its unity with Yours. Let my faith in You be the bread I consume each day.

​Amen




Lori MacDonald

Hi. My name is Aurea and I am an overthinker. I will anticipate every outcome, valid or not. More than once my overthinking has caused me to miss out on an opportunity or frozen me from taking action. Sometimes I just can’t get out of my own way! That’s what I hear when Saint Paul tells the Gentiles not to live “in the futility of their minds”.


Living in my head is not a good place to be. I end up considering every detail of events, presentations, plans, over and over again to make sure I’ve covered everything. And more often than not, I get bogged down by the details and forget the bigger picture. I lose sight of the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. You can know something (head) or you can really know something (heart). Knowing with my head is important for details, knowing with my heart is what helps me to know why. Twenty-one years ago, I was overseeing a pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2000 to Rome. Exciting? Yes. Ripe with opportunities to overthink? YES! After ten days of blood, sweat, and tears — sometimes literally — our group was headed home exhausted but also encouraged and on fire for the Lord. As I walked up and down the aisle of our plane checking in with folks on the flight home, one young man looked at me with a huge smile on his face and said, “Aurea, I never understood the meaning of the saying: ‘You only get as much as you put in’, until this trip. It’s really true!” Suddenly an axiom he had been taught made sense. We had spent 10 days challenging ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. There were days I was so physically and mentally tried from my responsibilities that all I had left to pull me through was the Spirit. To push myself that hard, left me vulnerable; vulnerable to Christ and all that He taught me. In my weakness, I needed to rely on Christ’s strength.  Our experience renewed what we knew not only in our heads, but also so deeply in our hearts; that Christ lived, died, rose from the dead, and lives in each of us and all who believe. When I reach for that certainty, I can get out of my head and enter my heart to see, hear, and understand things differently. I can remember that I am a gifted and graced daughter of God — who has work do! Suddenly, like that young man, the things of Christ that I have been taught become real.


The things we’ve been taught become real when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable; when we let them move from our heads to our hearts. However, vulnerability isn’t easy or comfortable. It has been said that the longest distance to travel is between your head and your heart. Christ did not come to change minds, Christ came to change hearts. He was willing to go the distance. Are we?




Aurea Sadi

One of my favorite stories to tell is the story of my conversion. It is absolutely a story of the “... glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that He has done.” In a nutshell, I was born into a Christian family but I walked away from my faith as a young adult. During my time at university I ended up living a life that was very worldly and not at all good for me. At the end of my first year I was in a very dark place. That Holy Thursday, I found myself drawn to go to mass. As I said, I was brought up as a Christian but not as a Catholic. Still, I found myself sitting alone in a Catholic church on the feast of the Lord’s Supper feeling small and ashamed and unworthy to be there. But I also felt the love of God pouring over me in a way I had never felt before. 

This was just the beginning of my return to God that continues to this day. Every morning I wake up and thank God for a new day and ask Him how I can serve Him and His people. This is my daily step closer to Him and eternal life; one simple step on the path that He has chosen for me. 

My job right now has me working regularly with young adults. I tell this story to them often. When I meet a student who is in a similar place to where I was at that age, I tell them this story of God’s glorious deeds and how He worked in my life. I believe that one of the reasons He allowed me to go through that dark time was so I could empathize with the students I work with and help them to have hope. 

Another story I like to tell is how it took my husband and I three years to conceive our first child. It was a very stressful time for me. Even though I claimed to trust God and His plan for my life, I still lamented every month when I realized I wasn’t pregnant. It wasn’t until we seriously surrendered our own plans to Him that we finally had peace in our hearts. We were able to put our trust in the plan that God had for our lives and believe that it was far better than any plan we had for ourselves. One month later we conceived and within the next 13 years we had 8 beautiful children. God is good!

Don’t be afraid to share your stories. I have seen countless people encouraged by the news of how God is moving in someone else's life. It gives us the hope that if He did that for one person, then He will do it for us too. It reminds us that God is working for good in our lives even when we can’t see it. 

Today, tell someone how God has blessed you. Don’t let fear and doubt stop you from telling everyone of the wonders that He has done in your life.


Let us pray… Lord Jesus, You have done so many glorious deeds in my life. Give me the opportunity and the courage to share these stories with someone else today. Amen




​Maxine Brown
​

When I prepare to write a reflection, I often consult commentaries or a study Bible to better understand the passage. Earlier this week, I came to appreciate just how valuable a practice this is. Reflecting on the Bible story of God providing manna in the desert, I came across a YouTube video that was clearly intended to be a serious treatment of the story. However, when it got to the part about God raining bread from heaven for the Israelites, hunks of French bread began falling down upon the actors, banging them on the head so that they had to put their arms up to protect themselves.


Moral of the story: remember to check the facts.


In Sunday’s reading, we encounter the Israelites in the wilderness. Having recently witnessed the ten plagues, been led out of Egypt with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud after hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, being pursued by the Egyptians to the shores of the Red Sea where they would surely have been slaughtered by the Egyptians except that God parted the Red Sea for them so that they could cross to the other side and their enemies could be destroyed, they are complaining.


God has provided for the Israelites through thick and thin. He has worked miracles for them. But now, with empty bellies, they disregard all that. In fact, they long for the good old slave days in Egypt, which in rose-coloured hindsight seems to be a not-so-bad place.


Ungrateful.


Remind you of anyone?


I’m looking in the mirror, and I’m looking at you.


Like the Israelites, we need to check the facts, especially when we find ourselves in a wilderness place. Those are the times when we just don’t think straight, and it’s easy to disregard all that God has done for us. It’s easy to grumble. It’s easy to ignore the goodness in our circumstances, but consider this — we don’t always see our circumstances as they are. And that’s why we have to trust that God knows us and His plan is to prosper us and not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11). We must trust that He is at work with us and within us during our wilderness times.


Has God not always been with us and for us? Has God not always been faithful? Has God not given us everything, even Himself? Check the facts.


God knows us, and He knows that we will grumble during our wilderness times. Lucky for us, God has more patience than, well, a saint. He has more patience than Moses who, Exodus later tells us, eventually asked God to kill him so that he wouldn’t have to put up with the grumbling any more.


In the end, though, God wants us to get over our grumbling, turn away from ingratitude, honour what He has done for us, and remember that His ways are not like our ways. We can’t always see the plan, but we can always check the facts, and that will help us to remember how much we have to be grateful for.




Donna Davis