“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4). Jesus Christ is both the Bread of Life and the Word. We partake of bread during the Sacrament each week to renew our covenants to always remember Jesus Christ keep His commandments that we may always have His Spirit to be with us. We ask our Heavenly Father for the daily bread of Christ's enabling power of the Atonement. The bread of Christ's grace and tender mercies fills our hungry souls, gives us the strength to face, endure and overcome the trials and temptations that we face, and heals and repairs our broken hearts. In short, in a world filled with evil and malice and tragedy, the Bread of Life helps to sustain us so that we may survive the ups and downs of our daily existence. But we cannot live by bread alone, even the Bread of Life. That is why we also need the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:1-5). We refer to Jesus as “the Word”, but surely Jesus could not have made everything with just one single word. In fact, Jesus Christ is not just a Word, but every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. How many of these Words have we received? Do we hear the word Sinner, but not the word beloved? Do we receive the word grace but reject the word work? If we only partake of the Bread of Life, we will deprive ourselves of the light and illumination that come from the Word. And if we have begun to compile the Words into a sort of dictionary, we should not stop when our dictionary is the size of a pamphlet. The Oxford English Dictionary has over 600,000 words and phrases and 3 million quotations and that would barely even scratch the surface of every Word that represents Christ. Relying on the Bread of Life every day is necessary and important, but if we are not seeking out new Words of Christ every day, then we are not truly living life the way our Heavenly Father intended for us. I hope that each new Word we find deepens our relationship with our Savior and floods our mind and our hearts with more and more light.
