How does Life work? ...

Wednesday, Jan 11, 2023. What is the basic thing which keeps you alife? It is clear that we have to eat and drink, that we need air to breath. It might be a little less clear that we need other people, living alone does not work - we cannot survive. Is that all what we need?

Life …

How does life work? Today we know a lot about the human body, about its biology, its medicine, its physics, chemistry, psychology. To some extent we are considered as machines which are in intense interaction with its surrounding. We take in water and food. We take in air. The substances are changed by our internal processes, they are transformed and given back to the environment in transformed way.

What is human? We also know that we have a mind, that we can think and feel. We have a voice, we can speak. Language and reason as well as the emotional world with its images is extremely fascinating. What is it that makes a man or woman human?

The New Testament also tells us that there is God, who is needed for our life. We need him as the origin, center and goal of our life. If we do not have him in our life, we will die - a little bit as the human body without air, without water, without food. Jesus calls himself the bread of life, see the gospel of John, chapter 6.

35 Then Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry. And whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6, 39)

Bread of Life …

Jesus is telling us that we cannot do without him. We need this bread of life. We need him, as a person. We need him to be in our life in a very real and deep way. What does he mean, what exactly?

The statement has several layers of meaning. In the New Testament, Jesus is proclaimed as the saviour. He dies at the cross of a hill close to the ancient city of Jerusalem. His death is described as a central act, where God judges all injustice. All crimes. All ignorance. All where humans have gone completely wrong or just a little bit off - it is all accumulated into the death at the cross, the death of Jesus.

He is the bread of life, since we need this justice. Without this justice, we will not be able to live in the presence of the eternal God.

But there is a second layer of meaning in the word of the bread of life. You cannot live without God. Humans are made for a heavenly father. We are made to live in a family. Our whole life and existence points to this as if it would be a parable itself. We are born, helpless. We need father and mother, we need them to feed us and take care of us. It is the same for our whole life with our heavenly father. We need God, without him we are missing the perspective, we are made for. Without him we have a life of some decades and that is it. But with him, we have an eternal father, with whom we live forever.

Humans are made for this perspective. They are made for a fantastic God, who is love himself, purity, gentleness, but also power and majesty. When you find this God, you realize how deeply you needed him all the time. This is called peace, since you came home to your origin and ultimate goal. Jesus is the bread of life, to open this path to God, for each and every one who wants to go through this door. (Roland Potthast)