I just had my mind blown as I was working on this devotional. Call it serendipitous – looking for one thing but finding another. Let me set this up.
You bought a loaf of bread at the store and when you got home, you had to remove those pesky bread clips or twist ties. Does anyone else dislike those as much as I do? Now, I’ve seen enough Instagram reels to know that highly creative and out-of-the-box thinkers have come up with some rather ingenious uses for those pieces. I’m not one of those types of people. I take the clip or tie off ONE time. It goes in the trash and once I’ve gotten my slice of bread, I spin the loaf, twisting the bag, and tucking the twisted end under the weight of the loaf. In our house, you don’t just grab the loaf. You make sure that you have the twisted end. Otherwise, bread is likely to go everywhere. (That’s the voice of experience talking!)
Have you ever noticed that the clips or ties are a certain color? I always assumed that the color had something to do with matching the colors on the bag or the bakery. Not at all. The color has to do with what day the bread was delivered.
Rather than squeezing the loaf for freshness, learn the manufacturing color coding. However, even that’s not really necessary according to Snopes.com.
“Bread is not kept on the shelf for longer than a couple of days. Indeed, it’s those colored twist tags that make this recycling of stock practical: because of them, the restocker has an easy time recognizing which loaves have to be taken away.
“Those tags assist mightily in your never getting stuck with an older loaf, even if you’re not much of a bread squeezer. In the absence of the color cues, some of the older product might be overlooked by a harried clerk trying to read one tiny “Best Before” date after another… As it is, shoppers should never encounter more than two colors of tags on the shelf at any time for any one brand of bread: that of the most recent delivery and that of the one just before it. This will sometimes work out to being today’s and yesterday’s bakings, but there will generally be two days a week when no bread is delivered, thus a three-day spread will be represented by the two colors at stores that receive delivery only five times a week instead of seven.”1
Welcome to church this morning where the Bread is always served fresh!!
“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. (33) For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. (34) Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. (35) And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:32-35)
And the Word of God is compared to bread. Isaiah 55:10-11 says, “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: (11) So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
As a pastor, it is my privilege to preach the Bread! And the Bread is always fresh. After 38+ years of preaching, I can honestly say that the Lord doesn’t allow me to re-preach a sermon. Yes, I re-preach passages or topics but it’s not the same message as when I preached it before. The Lord has never allowed me to do that – and there are a few times when I tried!
Occasionally, I was frustrated because the message wasn’t coming and I’d get grumpy with God, “informing Him” that if He didn’t give me something, I was just going to pull out an “oldie but a goodie.” I can count on one hand how many times this has happened, but it was Saturday, and I still had nothing. I would go through some old sermons and say with attitude, “I’m preaching this one, Lord!”
And God laughed!
Next thing I knew, all the things I had been studying throughout the week began to gel. 
Thoughts flew in so fast I could barely keep up! Within short order, the sermon was finished, the old sermon was shelved, and I received my reprimand from the Lord for getting sassy and showing such little faith. Thankfully, it has been a LOT of years since I went through this. This just might be one of the lessons I’ve actually learned in my Christian walk.
Today, we have the privilege of corporately meeting with Jesus. We get to partake of that bread. Let’s never miss the opportunity to enjoy and feast on the Bread of Life.
Jesus said in John 6:48, “I am that bread of life.”
1https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-tag-code/
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