Life is full of important questions, but the most important one concerns who Jesus is.
Do you remember the Disney movie classic "The Jungle Book?" It's a story about abandonment and fostering that captured the imagination and attention of children all over the world (and even some of us adults!) through its come-to-life jungle characters. The portly and friendly bear, Baloo takes in an abandoned young boy named Mowgli and wishes to raise him in the jungle as his own, teaching and mentoring him along the way. In one of his musical mentoring moments, Baloo reminds Mowgli that living a carefree lifestyle is to remember what are the bare necessities. He sings, “Look for the bare necessities / the simple bare necessities / forget about your worries and your strife / I mean the bare necessities / old Mother Nature's recipes / that brings the bare necessities of life.”
What would you consider to be the bare necessities of life?
How do you differentiate between needs and wants?
What earthly things do you worry about that have little spiritual value?
(we all do this last one, whether we want to admit it or not!)
Jesus attempts to remind us of what our spiritual bare necessities happen to be. We place a lot of emphasis and meaning on lots of stuff in this world, hoping it will bring us….fame and fortune, direction and guidance, meaning and fulfillment, happiness and joy? It is easy and sometimes it even feels good to seek out things that rust and that moths destroy thinking these things are life's essentials. If, on the other hand, our attention should be on things which are eternal, then perhaps we, like Mowgli, should listen to Baloo or, even better, perhaps we should take into consideration the words of Jesus the Christ when he says, “I am the bread of life.”