“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab...”

How humilitating it must have been for Elimelech to admit to wife Naomi that the House of Bread had no bread. There in the center of Israel's bread basket, there was no grain in “grainland” (Ephratah).

Their men now dead, Naomi brought daughter-in-law Ruth back from Moab to find the area once again flourishing, with grain and bread in abundance. Ruth had been redeemed by her kinsman, Boaz, and from their love came Obed. From Obed came Jesse and from Jesse, David. When Samuel, father of the prophets, annointed him in Bethlehem as king of Israel, the village came to be known further as the City of David.

Then another, Micah, prophesied messianically that a son of David was to be born there: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

As time was fulfilled, “Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem...” The angel sent shepherds of Ephratah back into town “for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Despite crops in the field, the land was then groaning from the worst famine imaginable. The Ephratah fields were yielding their usual harvest of grain as in the days of Ruth and Obed, mind you, and Bethlehem's ovens were producing a wealth of bread—but the people were yet starving. With full stomachs, their souls were dead.

But from the virgin womb, that day in Bethlehem the city of David, there was born the son of David, our Kinsman-Redeemer. Some years later, in arid and hilly Galilee, he took a snack of bread and fed over five thousand people. The silly crowds clamored for more bread, which would only perish. Against this, he offered himself: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

Yet again, the night he was betrayed “he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”

We need not journey to Bethlehem in Ephratah for this bread. Our journey is to the House of the Bread of Life.