Generous Stewardship

John 6 is talking about bread.

First, in John 6.1-15, Christ is providing bread to a crowd of 5,000 by miraculously breaking the 5 loaves and two fishes.  I was interested to note that he broke the bread, and then gave it to his disciples to be generous with.  It made me think of our discussions on stewardship.  He made the disciples stewards of his miraculous generosity.  He was generous with them, and expected them to be generous with the crowd of followers.

Next, in John 6.25-27, the crowds follow him.  He confronts them with the fact that they are following because he gave them bread and they were filled.  He commands them not to work for that kind of bread, but for eternal bread.  He, being generous on a much grander scale than before, explains that He himself is the "bread" which them must eat (Jn 6.28-71) knowing, I am sure that in order for them to eat His flesh and drink His blood, He is going to broken.

So, how can we love our wife as Christ loved His church?  We can accept, for ourselves, the bread the He offers us, which is Himself.  And, like the disciples, we can then turn, and be generous with our wife and family, as we "break" the bread for them by sharing the Good News that He was broken for them.

By the way: have you noticed the grammatical difficulty of the word wife and wives?  If we say "our wives" it can be read as we each have more than one wife.  If we say "our wife" it can be read as if we both have the same wife.