John 6:35-40

John 6:35-40 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  I was watching our 18 month old try and eat ice cream this evening and was amazed at her ability to get ice cream everywhere but her mouth.  I tried to remove the lump of ice cream that was running down her neck, but she was insistent that she was saving it for later, which is a step up from her demands the other day that her shirt be removed after she spilled applesauce on it.  She's learning to eat, and it's a messy process.
  Which isn't that different from our attempts to learn how to eat the bread of life. 
  Jesus comes as the bread of life, and in so doing he reveals the will of God -- that everyone look upon the Son and be saved, raised on the last day from death and basking in eternal life through Jesus Christ.  That's our destiny, and Jesus points out that he is not to lose anyone, which is a helpful point for the discussion about whether it's possible to lose our salvation.  Jesus doesn't lose us, and he doesn't forget us like a set of car keys left behind somewhere -- he holds us tightly, now and forever.
  But we still have to learn how to take in the bread of life, so that we learn how not to hunger.  Our appetites convince us to hunger for many things in this life, and that hunger drives us to often do selfish and short-sighted things, things that can damage us or our relationships.  Our hunger clouds our long  term vision, so we learn, slowly, over a lifetime, how to consume the bread of life and allow Jesus to satiate our desires.  We learn to feed daily, hourly even, so that the Spirit teaches and encourages us to focus on Jesus and allow him to fix our desires, so that we might understand what we truly need and what we do not.
  So we're learning how to eat, and it can be messy and complicated, but over time, with patience, we grow into the people God is calling us to be.