• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Sermo Humilis

Humble Speech

  • Home
  • Topics
    • Just a Thought
    • Who we Are Instead
    • Life in Christendom
  • Series
    • Topical
      • Words that Matter
      • Jesus Through all of Life
      • 8 Weeks Before Marriage
      • Life and Times of Jesus
      • Rock of Ages
      • The Ten Commandments
    • Bible Book
      • Proverbs
      • The Book of Ezra
      • 1 Corinthians
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Life in Christendom / He Fills the Hungry

He Fills the Hungry

31 July 2020 By David Trounce

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

He Fills the Hungry - Sermo Humilis

We like to think of ourselves as independent creatures. We take it as a point of pride that our strength, endurance, patience and wit got us to where we are today. But, like a tree planted by streams of water, we are in fact, entirely dependant.

We are dependent on the charity (love), justice, patience, cooperation and labour of others to not only thrive but to survive. Not only that, but we are dependent on a set of agreed standards for each of these things in order to do something as basic as crossing the street, posting a letter or driving from one side of town to the other.

Our failure to recognise this over time is what leads to a thankless and ultimately brutal society.

We see an orderly line at the post office and think that this is simply the result of human nature. But that is not the case. Such standards are underpinned by Christian values and run quite contrary to our human nature.

There is a reason for Stalin’s Russia, Liberia’s poverty and for the steel bars welded to the outside of family cars in Bangladesh.

Remove the underpinning values we depend on and we soon find ourselves re-living Lord of the Flies.

Perhaps the most obvious example of our dependence on something outside of us in order to survive is food.

Food means dependence. We are eating creatures who cannot live unless we take in something from outside of us. Ultimately, we are dependent upon God. The food we eat is dead, and only God can cause it to become life for us.

Food is also for fellowship. Sharing our food brings us into community. At the table, food is passed and shared. Such meals establish an in-group and an out-group and the table manners expressed there spill over into the values of our society.

Food is also, and always has been, central to worship. From the beginning of time, the sanctuaries in the Bible are dominated by meals. Adam and Eve walk with God in a garden of food. Abraham, and later Israel, build altars, which are tables of food through which communion with God is maintained. Food shared before Him, food shared with Him.

In the gospel, meals have a distinctly evangelistic flavour, a place where good news is shared and celebrated.

At the Lord’s Supper, we eat bread and drink wine, which are not natural products. Here, the Lord endorses our bread-making and our wine-making and invites us to come into His presence with the work of our hands and eat at His table.

All such meals, along with all food, symbolise the nature of Jesus’ mission and our utter dependence on it. Here, the Bread of Life is given to a dying world. Here, the Lamb of God is given to those who are dead in trespasses and sins.

Here, our dependence is not something to be shunned or denied but rather something to be celebrated and give thanks for. Here the hungry are made humble and enjoy the goodness of God’s love, justice, patience, companionship and labour.

Here, we are filled with good things so that we may go and feed others with those same good things.


Image background courtesy of https://www.zaberri.co.nz/pick-your-own

Related...

He Shall be Their Peace

This is My Father's World

Not a Tame Man

Weight Lifting

Filed Under: Life in Christendom Tagged With: Dependance, Dependence, Hunger


Writing Ideas on Sermo HumilisWhat do You Want to Read About?

 

Nothing like real-world issues to focus the mind. If you have something you would like me to write about, send me a message and let me know.

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karen Mackay says

    4 August 2020 at 10:12 pm

    Thank you David!

Primary Sidebar

Sermo Humilis

For the love of all things true, beautiful and good.


Welcome to Sermo Humilis, a digital home for biblical discipleship and cultural Christianity. A few new thoughts every week.

Please remember to like, subscribe and share. It really helps me out.

Categories

  • Life in Christendom
  • Just a Thought
  • Who we Are Instead

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Series

Sidebar Series - 1 Corinthians Sidebar - Words that Matter Sidebar - Jesus Through all of Life Series Sidebar Series - The Book of Ezra

The Most Popular Guff

Against Greed

The story Jesus told of the rich man in Luke 12:16-21 is ageless and

Blessed are all who take Refuge in Him

Man longs for refuge. He longs for safety. We long for these things

Patriarchy

God is our Father. He is the penultimate Father and He rules the

The Last Time

There will be a last time. A last time you will ever play a game with

Antithesis

We live in a binary world. Male and female, night and day, heaven and

Those Glorious Little Mercies

The things that happen to Hannah could happen and do happen, to

Ezra #4 – Opposition

William Carey, the great Baptist missionary and linguist, arrived in

See and Hear

On the move? Weekly content can also be seen and heard via Youtube.

Topics

Beauty Charity Children Covenant Creation Death Discipleship Evangelism Faith Faithfulness Fear Forgiveness Gospel Grace Grief Guilt Holiness Hope Jesus Joy Judgement Kingdom Law Liberty Life Love Marriage Mercy Money Obedience Power Prayer Redemption Rest Resurrection Sacrifice Salvation Service Sin Suffering Truth Victory Weakness Wisdom Worship

Footer

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe to Sermo Humilis

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Copyright © 2025 · Sermo Humilis

Thor's Oak

Around 723 AD, a missionary named Boniface entered Hesse in Germany. Upon finding a sacred tree named Thor’s Oak, he took an axe to it, cut it down and built a church. Many in the town, believing that the God of Boniface must be greater than Thor, left their paganism behind converted to Christianity.