Guess I've always enjoyed bread products, and recall making the run home from school in record time when I knew Mom was baking yeast rolls for lunch ... yummee! But when we served as missionaries in Germany in the 50's we really came to appreciate "Brot," especially the hard-crusted dark bread and the breakfast rolls call "Broetchen" ("little breads"--"Semmeln" in Bavaria). One day from our apartment in Frankfurt we watched a little old lady on the 5th floor across the street dangling a basket on a rope to the ground floor -- in front of the local bakery! Of course they loaded in her ordered Brot products and she quickly reeled up the basket ... talk about service! Another time there we observed a little boy walking down the street from the bakery with a shopping net full of Broetchen bouncing along on the sideweek behind him. We wonder if "Mama" asked him about those dark spots in the rolls? Ach, some new spices, maybe? A loaf of that good dark bread cost us about 1 German mark (their dollar), worth at that time 25 cents in our money ... try to find a loaf of bread now at that price anywhere! Bread was, and still is, a staple in the German home, but there was, and is, a shortage of spiritual bread in that land, as well as in America. The prophet Jeremiah describes his own people centuries ago
as having the same problem: "All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul..." (Lamentations 1:11) Material bread satisfies for a short time, but the Lord Jesus Christ advises us: "I AM the Bread of Life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst!" Then the Psalmest invites everyone to "O TASTE and SEE that the LORD is good...! (Psalm 34:8). Have YOU done that?
