In Maslow’s triangle the facets of life are organised in layers, with the most important on the bottom – that’s wifi and battery isn’t it?
In my military survival training I still recall the words Protection, Location or Concealment, Water and Food – by the way Food was the least of our priorities in that situation. Initially you really thought that they had it all wrong, but when the rain fell, the winds blew, they had it right.
But that it is to survive, not to live fully, to live abundantly, to flourish.
In the passage this week (John 6: 51-58) there is some confusion with the Jews (hoi Ioudaioi) about eating flesh. Do they really believe that a teacher who has found favour with so many people would start to become a cannibal?
Just as Jesus spoke with Nicodemus in John 3 about a man re-entering a woman’s womb, this argument was rhetorical, a key attribute of Jewish discussion.
This is a protracted argument however, we are still going on about being fed not by manna but by the bread of heaven. Not physical bread which can rot overnight, or go stale, but living metaphorical bread. If we live, eat, and love as Christ we are participating and present in the life of Christ. It as much as being with God rather than anything to do with eating food.
Perhaps we can get distracted by the Biblical passages if we take everything as physical, directly translatable and not inspect the actual context. We’d never do this with any other letter or online article. We may not read a certain newspaper article without thinking whether they have an axe to grind on a particular issue.
Our time reading the Bible needs that understanding of the prior context : who wrote it, why, to whom and when?
It was very good I think that it is very important to look after the world and pray to God