*U.S. Department of Agriculture - 20111110-OC-AMW-0012\, Public Domain*

When I was growing up, healthy living was different than it is now. This is true for you, too, no matter your age.

For me, a suntan used to be a good thing, a thing of value. Today, does anyone even use the term without thinking of skin cancer?

Before SPF was added to sunscreens, we basically slathered some form of oil or butter onto our skin, went out into the sunlight and soaked in as much of it as my friends and I could. Coppertone—just the mention of it summons up the smell of summer with little bits of sand here and there.

The old food pyramid was uniformly accepted as authoritative. Here is a look at a visual representation from the past.

The best part of this food graphic is really a dream come true for all of us: “In addition to the basic 7 . . . eat any other foods you want!” (Exclamation added by me.)

Today, it’s more complicated. Studies show health benefits of chocolate, coffee, red wine, marijuana . . . and there are other studies that say the exact opposite. My family doctor told me recently that if we are going to eat a steak, choose one with a lot of fat and stay away from the leaner cuts.

We think we know what’s good for us, but in 40 or 50 years, some of what we think is healthy is going to be as comical for the people of that time as this “basic seven” poster is for us today.

People eat all kinds of things that didn’t used to be available at grocery stores. Who knew about kale chips, avocado oil, rembutan, cauliflower pizza, kombucha . . . the list goes on. The search for alternative foods with a healthy spin, exploring the world for new and different food is not new.

“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”

This quote comes from a television commercial for Grape Nuts cereal. The speaker was a man named Euell Gibbons, who was a nature writer, cookbook author, health explorer and proponent of healthy eating in the 1970s. A precursor to the current foraging movement, Gibbons was featured in National Geographic magazine in discovering food in the least likely places.

One other thing about Euell Gibbons. He died.

Wikipedia reports his cause of death as “a ruptured aortic aneurysm, a common complication from Marfan syndrome.” No matter what Euell ate, he couldn’t escape the genetic disorder he was born with. Kind of like sin for all of us.

After Gibbons died, John McPhee wrote in The New York Times:

“Euell Gibbons had begun learning about wild and edible vegetation when he was a small boy in the Red River Valley. Later, in the dust-bowl era, his family moved to central New Mexico. They lived in a semi-dugout, and almost starved there. His father left in a desperate search for work. The food supply diminished until all that was left were a few pinto beans and a single egg, which no one would eat. Euell, then teenaged and one of four children, took a knapsack one morning and left for the horizon mountains. He came back with puffball mushrooms, piñon nuts, and fruits of the yellow prickly pear. For nearly a month, the family lived wholly on what he provided, and he saved their lives. ‘Wild food has meant different things to me at different times,’ he said to me once. ‘Right then it was a means of salvation, a way to keep from dying.’”

As people, we get excited about food, diet and exercise discoveries, fads and fashions. We put faith in these things. We live so much of our lives by the studies we hear related to diet and environment. People can easily get entranced by the adventure of discovering new food and trying to find a kind of salvation in the things we eat.

Ultimately, there is only one food that satisfies, only one that saves.

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. . . .

So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Let’s try something this week. Think about the time it takes to buy groceries or prepare a meal, the time spent reading about the food you’re baking or blending or putting in the Instant Pot or whatever; think about the time you use to follow posts about health and food and exercise or other forms of busyness. And then, take at least some of that time to reflect on the Bread of Life and the eternal feast he’s preparing for us.

We can start this Sunday at the table—the Lord’s Table—as we take the bread and drink the cup and remember that this is his body broken for us; this is his blood shed for us. Extend that reflection at our thoughts about all the things we eat through the week.

This is the one thing, or should we say person, that we can know for sure. He is our food, our light, our only hope.

Give us this bread always.