Bread for the Journey
Guest Malcolm Guite
Stones into Bread by Malcolm Guite
The Fountain thirsts, the Bread is hungry here,
The Light is dark, the Word without a voice.
When darkness speaks it seems so light and clear.
Now he must dare, with us, to make a choice.
In a distended belly’s cruel curve
He feels the famine of the ones who lose,
He starves for those whom we have forced to starve
He chooses now for those who cannot choose.
He is the staff and sustenance of life,
He lives for all from one sustaining Word,
His love still breaks and pierces like a knife
The stony ground of hearts that never shared,
God gives through him what Satan never could;
The broken bread that is our only food.
The Bread of Life by Malcolm Guite
Where to get bread? An ever-pressing question
That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers,
Bread for their families, bread for all these others;
A whole world on the margin of exhaustion.
And where that hunger has been satisfied
Where to get bread? The question still returns;
In our abundance something starves and yearns,
We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied.
And then comes One who speaks into our needs,
Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish,
Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish,
Whose words unfold in us like living seeds:
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I am the bread of life, break me and eat.