Most of us worry a little about food. Grocery store prices keep going up and many items we pay for keep getting smaller. We’re told that costs will continue to rise because of upcoming changes in the North American Free Trade agreement and side effects from global warming. The United Nations reports that one out of nine people on earth are undernourished and can’t live a healthy, active life. Droughts and conflicts in central African countries make food production more difficult. And the world population will reach 9 billion by 2050. Experts worry if we can feed everybody.

It would seem strange that Canadians would worry about food. We seem to have lots of it. Food production, in fact, is Canada’s largest manufacturing employer – 285,000 people! We have a climate that allows us to grow lots of it, and some of us even have our own gardens at home. And in addition to all these advantages, we are surrounded by a host of restaurants that want you to come and eat.

Emerging from Egypt, Israel worried about what they could eat traveling in the desert. It didn’t look too promising. Moses later remarked, “And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know…that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” (Dt.8:3). Jesus later quoted Moses’ words when dealing with the devil’s temptations in Matt.4:4. He was pointing out that there’s more to life than producing and eating physical food. We also need everything God said in His word.

In Jesus’ statement, at the least, the word of God is placed in equal importance to our need for physical food. In some senses it’s more important, for it can give us an eternal destiny when food can’t.

This is why we need to spend time in the word of God every day learning it, savouring it, and putting it into practice. Great lives feed on more than just physical food. We ought to worry a little when we haven’t taken time to open its pages.

Have you fed on the word of God today?

– Tim Johnson