1, 2, breathe. 1, 2, breathe.
Each breath triggered a new pain in my stomach as I swam. My stomach was cramped and felt incredibly empty. The air taunted me - I needed food, not the nothingness it brought.
My shoulders started to burn. They hadn’t hurt before practice - I wondered if the pain was caused by my hunger.
Maybe I should tell Coach I’m too hungry to swim, I thought, and ask if I can do an alternative to the set.
I dismissed the idea quickly. Hunger didn’t seem like a credible excuse.
I really should have eaten more dinner before practice.
When I get home, I’m going to have a bagel with peanut butter… cheesy grits… and stir fry…
My thoughts continued in this fashion for about fifteen minutes but stopped in their tracks when I realized what was happening. I couldn’t stop thinking about food because of my hunger.
From there, I started to think about spiritual hunger. If I need God more than anything else, and I’m supposed to be hungry for Him, why don’t I think about Him all the time? I wondered. Since I was thinking about physical food when I was physically hungry, I should always be thinking of spiritual things because I’m always spiritually hungry. I don’t feel as spiritually hungry as I should be. Am I hungry? I wondered.
As I swam, I pondered why I was thinking about food. I’m hungry for God and I don’t think about Him all the time, so there must be a reason other than hunger for why I’m thinking about food, I thought. After a few minutes, I realized the answer: I was thinking about food because I knew it could satisfy my hunger.
Realization #1: We hunger for something because we know it can satisfy our hunger.
If I recognized and lived like Jesus was the only person in the world that could satisfy me, would I think about Him all the time? Would I become more hungry? He is the Bread of Life. If when I’m physically hungry I think of physical bread, when I’m spiritually hungry (which is all the time), I should think of Him, Spiritual Bread.
The more I thought about how God related to hunger, the less hungry I got. I wasn’t as focused on my hunger so it didn’t seem as large of a problem. That’s when I realized something else: the more I focus on my hunger, the bigger it gets.
Realization #2: The more we focus on our hunger, the hungrier we get.
This is also applicable to God. The more I focus on my hunger for God and His Word, the more I’ll want of Him. The more spiritually hungry I’ll get - I’ll start to crave Him. So from now on, I’m going to recognize and focus on my spiritual hunger, which will lead me to focus on who can satisfy my spiritual hunger: Jesus.
My thoughts shifted back to food for a while, and I again thought about what I would eat when I got home. Now that my thoughts were back on food, the cramping in my stomach got worse. I didn’t have any energy and I was missing the intervals for the sprint set.
As I thought about what I would eat at home, I started to wonder if I would overeat because of how hungry I was at the moment. This brought me to another question: can we overeat the Bread of Life?
My immediate answer was “No!” No matter how much food we eat, we’ll always need more eventually. No matter how much of the Word we read or how much of Jesus we get, we’ll always need more of Him.
Realization #3: We can’t overeat the Bread of Life.
Though we may get full of food, I doubt we’ll get full of Jesus. I’ve never had too much of Christ, whether I’ve spent 5 minutes or 2 hours with Him.
As I sit here now, writing this, I’ve had another realization. Usually, when we’re hungry we don’t have a lot of energy. When we eat, it gives us the energy to go about our daily activities.
Realization #4: We eat the Bread of Life to give us energy to live for Him.
When we eat the Bread of Life, it gives us motivation to go about our daily activities in a new way. We go about life His way and strive to glorify Him. If we don’t feed our spiritual hunger daily by spending time in the Word and in prayer, the fruit we produce will most likely decrease.
I will spend time in the Word and with Jesus every day so I can be filled with his Spirit and live for Him.
Here’s a summary of what I realized that night at swim practice:
Jesus is the Bread of Life, and bread was made to eat. We can consume the Bread of Life by spending time with Him and in His Word. Spending time with Jesus will fuel us to live for Him in the day ahead. When we focus on our hunger and recognize Jesus is the solution to it, our hunger for Him intensifies. We can never be too hungry for the Bread of Life.