The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” (Luke 4:3-4)

All of us get hungry. Jesus no less so. The question, is what do we do with our hunger, our appetite?

It was Adam and Eve’s appetite for fruit that was “good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” that drove them to “take some and eat it” (Genesis 3:6).

We do the same thing every day. We see and seek to take a lifestyle that includes a particular kind of house, a particular amount of income, a particular style of food pleasing to the eye (like a charcuterie board?), and all sorts of other material securities and assets, as well as shows, podcasts, and whatever else we consumers need to consume to feel full of life, secure in our position, and satisfied. The picture of our desire here that we hope to find is that of pushing ourselves away from a good meal at a spreading Thanksgiving Day table—warm, full, and satisfied—ready to rest and enjoy all the goodness we’ve just gobbled up.

Of course, whether we’re consuming food, fashion, fame, finances, or functional improvements to our homes—after we’ve bought and consumed the thing—we get hungry again. Enough is never quite enough. The hunger pangs return and we need more.

And so we continue grabbing and reaching for more—sometimes more than we were actually created to have, as was Adam & Eve’s case. This is the hunger for money that’s at the root of all evil. This is the hunger for security that causes us to compete and elbow others out—like in the vaccine ques or the toilet paper line ups. This is the insatiable hunger for more that turns a Creation of plenty into an environmental catastrophe of scarcity. This is a hunger for life that—when limited by no God-spoken boundaries—succeeds only in bringing death.

As with all our desires, our hunger for life and its material provision always points beyond itself to something better and lasting. Like: every word that comes from the mouth of God, including the word that was made flesh and became for us Jesus, the bread of life. He is the God of Creation and all provision who invites us to trust in him and pray to him for our daily bread rather than greedily or gluttonously grabbing it for ourselves. The invitation is to trust in God for our provision, rather than to secure it for ourselves.

Jesus knew this, and so with 40 days of hunger built up in his gut from the wasteland of scarcity he faced down the devil. And where humanity failed, Jesus prevailed, stating clearly and freely: “man shall not live on bread alone.” He satisfied his hunger with something better: with a trust in the God-provided boundaries that Adam and Eve had forsaken.

A deep temptation for us is to believe that we actually do live by bread alone, that our infinite hunger can be satisfied by finite, materials things like a house, a show, or a solid pension, and that we can actually wrangle those things out of the finite stones of this earth. But it never works. Food (along with the rest of the material world) is not an end in itself—it doesn’t satisfy. Rather, it is a means of experiencing, living by, and giving thanks for God’s good gifts, and so deepening the relationship of trust between us. The material world always points beyond itself—to something better—lifting the eyes of our hunger and longings up past our plate and pointing them to the Bread of Life instead.

Trusting in Jesus for our life’s provision, we will find our deepest hungers and thirsts satisfied. And out of that contended satisfaction, we may find it much easier to share the abundant provision of God we’ve received with others too. When you trust in the word of God for your provision, 5,000 can be fed before you know it from what looked for all the world to be utter scarcity. Our relationships with God, our neighbours, and the Creation itself can be restored. So, may God give us today our daily bread and help us to trust in him to do it.