I Am the Bread of Life – by Malcolm Guite
I have begun a new sonnet sequence on the seven beautiful and mysterious “I am ….” sayings of in St John’s Gospel. And here is sonnet on the first of them, “I am the bread” from John 6 and verse 35 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
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 fulfilment, 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.
© Malcolm Guite from Parable and Paradox: Sonnets on sayings of Jesus and other Poems, Canterbury Press 2016 www.malcolmguite.com
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