From a Field of Wheat to the Bread of Life: Harvesting God’s Word

From a Field of Wheat to the Bread of Life: Harvesting God’s Word

When I open the Bible and spend time in God’s word, it is as though I stepped into a vast field of wheat at the very peak of its readiness for harvest. The stalks are tall and strong, and the heads are bursting with kernels ready to be gathered in.

As I move through this golden sea, I miraculously do not trample any of the stalks or leave any track behind me. I simply pass through it and run my hands along the tops, absorbing all their symbolic goodness as to what they will become once reaped, winnowed, ground and baked into loaves: God’s Word, the Bread of Life.

Like a wheat field shifting, swaying and undulating in the wind, God’s word is a living thing. It moves from the page into our minds and hearts, never leaving its source, making the journey to and from it and back again, over and over, in an eternal cycle designed to nourish the soul of anyone who ventures in. Placing my hand on its pages is like touching the wheat stalks, as their power and strength flow into and through me, enriching me much the same as the finished product...the bread that feeds our souls just as that which nourishes our bodies, from the evening of Passover when God’s word came to fruition in the form of the unleavened loaf that Jesus blessed, broke and shared with his disciples at the Last Supper.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”~Matthew 26:26

Not only is God’s word nourishment for our spirits, but the bread becomes a symbol of salvation, of Jesus’ great and all-encompassing sacrifice on the cross, where a Lamb without blemish paid the price of sin and the ransom for our souls once and for all.

A field laden with a year’s providence of golden wheat or pages glowing with gilded words that remain new, alive and powerful no matter how often we read them...both are the bread we raise up toward Heaven, the words of praise we lift in the Lord’s honor...and that assure believers of complete forgiveness, liberation from death of the soul, and eternal life.