Jesus confronts our instinct to chase what fills us fast and fades even faster. In John 6:27, He redirects our hunger toward what actually lasts—an inner life sustained by Him, not by the endless grind of cravings, accomplishments, and comforts that can never quite satisfy.

Chasing What Perishes

It’s possible to be busy, successful, and even religious, yet still be living on spiritual “snacks.” Jesus isn’t scolding effort; He’s exposing misdirected effort. We can work hard for approval, control, pleasure, or security—and still end the day empty. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). That question isn’t meant to shame you; it’s meant to wake you up.

The hard part is that perishing bread often looks reasonable. We tell ourselves, “If I just get through this season… if I just fix that problem… if I just have a little more…” But cravings multiply. “The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God remains forever.” (1 John 2:17). Jesus is inviting you to stop living as though your deepest need can be met by something that expires.

The Meal Only Jesus Gives

Jesus speaks of food that endures—life that doesn’t rot from the inside out. He’s not offering better life-management; He’s offering Himself. Later in the chapter He says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst.” (John 6:35). That’s not poetry; it’s a promise. There is a kind of fullness that doesn’t depend on circumstances cooperating.

Notice how personal this is. The Father has set His seal on the Son—He is authorized, sufficient, and sure. When you come to Jesus, you aren’t guessing in the dark about whether God will receive you. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The enduring food is not a concept; it’s communion—daily reliance on the Savior who gives life, not just advice.

A New Way to Work

Jesus doesn’t eliminate “work”; He transforms it. The energy you used to spend proving yourself becomes energy spent trusting Him and obeying Him. The next verse asks what God requires, and Jesus answers that the work is to believe in the One He sent (John 6:28–29). That means the first and most important “to-do” today is not performance, but faith—steady, surrendered, practical faith.

So what does that look like on an ordinary day? It looks like choosing the better portion when distractions compete for your attention: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33). It looks like bringing your appetite to God honestly—your fears, ambitions, temptations, and fatigue—and letting His Word recalibrate you: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4). You’ll still work hard—but now you’ll work from fullness, not for it.

Father, thank You for giving lasting life through Your Son. Feed my heart with Christ today, and help me turn from what perishes to what pleases You—teach me to believe, obey, and seek Your kingdom first. Amen.

The birth of Christ told the world something. . . . His coming, I repeat, told the world something; it declared something, established something. What was it?

That something was several things, and as Christ broke the loaves into pieces for greater convenience in eating, let me divide the message into parts the easier to understand it. The Advent established:

First, that God is real. The heavens were opened and another world than this came into view. A message came from beyond the familiar world of nature. ''Glory to God in the highest,'' chanted the celestial host, ''and on earth peace, good will.'' Earth the shepherds know too well; now they hear from God and heaven above. Our earthly world and the world above blend into one scene and in their joyous excitement the shepherds can but imperfectly distinguish the one from the other.

It is little wonder that they went in haste to see Him who had come from above. To them God was no longer a hope, a desire that He might be. He was real. Second, human life is essentially spiritual. With the emergence into human flesh of the Eternal Word of the Father the fact of man's divine origin is confirmed. God could not incarnate Himself in a being wholly flesh or even essentially flesh. For God and man to unite they must be to some degree like each other. It had to be so.

The Incarnation may indeed raise some questions, but it answers many more. The ones it raises are speculative; the ones it settles are deeply moral and vastly important to the souls of men. Man's creation in the image and likeness of God is one question it settles by affirming it positively. The Advent proves it to be a literal fact.

The mercy of the Lord ts from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him. - Psalm 103:17

What is the length of the love of Christ? If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When He was here on earth it may have been sent down the generations in some vague, pale way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which he dimly sees will be affected by his sacrifice and service. But we do not call that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm, throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of affection; and unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be stretched to touch you. And if we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the Divine that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man’s heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals that should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I, looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length of the love of Christ, can say, "It stretches over all the years, and it reached then as it reaches now to touch me, upon whom the ends of the earth have come."

That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves, and think of our own life as unending, there comes a strangeness and an awe that is almost shrinking over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the thought of a love whose length is unending, then, over all the shoreless, misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every wavelet flashes up into glory. There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. " Master! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" "I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven." So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice - two sevens and a ten- in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. The pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from Heaven upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings; bears with us in all our sins. His pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the Divine words which have been spoken about our human love modeled after His. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon angry, beareth all things." The length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and out-measures all human sin.