Five loaves of bread and two fish

Bread has been an essential source of sustenance since the beginning of recorded history. Is there anything we don’t know about this important staple, this gift from God? The answer to this question is kneaded into our present time, please excuse the obvious play on the word kneaded. Unfortunately bread has become the weapon of choice for Israel as it starves those who oppose its use of force, a cultural genocide to the Palestinian people. It is not my intention to “pick sides”; that is for diplomats and politicians more knowledgeable than I.
What has become clear is that desperate people will employ desperate means for the essential right of all involved to have “bread”. The length that the people of Gaza will use to have bread - or its undesirable equivalent - is now well documented, as the starving people resort to the use of animal feed or fodder to make a foul-tasting unleavened bread to stave off starvation. It was reported within the last few weeks that a small bag of flour was selling on the black market for over $400, if it was available at all.
It is difficult to fathom here in the States, where bread of all types line the grocery store isles in relative abundance, that hungry children are starving on the other side of the planet.
One has to ask, isn’t the necessity of bread a birthright? Didn’t God design our harvest for the sustenance of all? Or, does the grace of God only extend to developed countries, those not mired in war, plagues, and drought?
As you knead your bread, let us reflect on those who are hungry. Didn’t Jesus choose to deliver bread to the throngs that followed him at the Sermon on the Mount?
In the book of First Chronicles, chapter 23, verses 29 and 30, God commanded:


“...both for the showbread and for the fine flour for meat offering, and for the unleavened cakes, and for that which is baked, and for that which is fried, and for all manner and size. And to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord at evening.”


While you prepare the bread this very day, and as the delightful aroma of fresh bread wafts through your kitchen, may you remember that the “showbread” the Bible mentions was a sanctified bread reserved for priests of the temple of Jerusalem, not a bread for those unable to receive this blessing. And yet, this command by God seems ironic, given that Israel controls Jerusalem and has disrupted the food supply into Gaza. When a crust of bread becomes a weapon that slaughters innocent children, one should ask why?
Are we, as a nation, ready to do what needs to be done, are we ready, as the Bible instructs, to “cast our bread upon the water?” Think about that biblical admonition as you eat your loaf of bread and you cast your votes.