Daily Bread

Shifrah Combiths, a freelance writer and mother-of-five in Tallahassee, Florida, wrote about a baking hack for the website The Kitchn that was so valuable it was picked up overseas by the British tabloid The Mirror.

Combiths had a mom who used to love eating the last slice of bread in a loaf, often referred to as “the heel.” (“Save the heel for me,” her mom was fond of saying.) Later in life, Combiths was surprised to find out that her mom’s enthusiasm for the final slice of bread was a bit unusual. So, her tip is for people who don’t enjoy eating the heel.

“It’s simple,” she writes. “Use that heel of bread to keep your soft, homemade cookies, well, soft … cookies that are supposed to be soft and chewy are disappointing when they become crunchy and stale!”

Combiths says the hack works because the moisture in the bread, when in close contact with the cookies, will eventually transfer over. She even says it can be a last resort to restore some chewiness to already-hardened cookies.

“Use this cookie-saving tip when you make big batches — or you need to make baked treats the night before a gathering of friends and family.”

Combiths does offer a brief warning, however. “It’s crucial to ensure the bread is plain,” she says. “Unless you want garlic-flavored cookies.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The love of God has the power to influence others. For maximum effectiveness, remain close to God and watch his love spill over to the people in your immediate circle of relationship.

For the past eight years, the non-profit organization CARE has been tracking what it calls the year’s ten worst humanitarian crises. This year places like Angola, Zambia, Burundi, and Uganda faced famines, wars, or crises that impacted at least one million people. CARE uses a media monitoring service to count the number the crisis gets mentioned in mainstream media sources. Then it compares that number to the number of times more popular stories get mentioned.

Here are some examples from their annual report: There were over 273,000 online articles about the new Barbie film, while the abuse of women’s rights in every country in the report received next to no coverage. The crisis in Angola received the least media attention in 2023. Despite 7.3 million people in the country in desperate need of humanitarian aid, it received just 1,049 media mentions.

By comparison, 273,421 articles were written about the new iPhone 15. Taylor Swift’s world tour garnered 163,368 articles while Prince Harry’s book Spare got 215,084. Meanwhile, drought and floods in Zambia had 1,371 articles.

The CARE report concludes: “In a world where news cycles are becoming more short-lived, it is more important than ever that we collectively remember that every crisis, whether forgotten or not, brings with it a human toll.”

When Rev. Heber Brown III started noticing a particular need trending in his church, he did what pastors do – he found a way to spearhead a solution. Jesus said that man shall not live by bread alone; now, neither do the people under Brown’s care.

That’s because his church, Pleasant Hope Baptist, planted a community garden in order to provide the people in their community with fresh produce. Since food deserts, obesity, and diabetes plague many parts of Baltimore, the garden is meeting a critical need in the community.

Not content to keep all the goodness, Brown considered what might happen if he could find other local and regional partners. “We saw attendance bump up in our worship, we saw a great energy … and it went so [well] here, that I wondered what would happen if we could spread it through other churches and create a network of churches that do the same thing.”

Spreading it around meant not only partnering with local farmers and starting a pop-up farmers’ market after church, but partnering with other churches in neighboring Baltimore, Washington D.C., Virginia, and North Carolina in an initiative known as the The Black Church Food Security Network.

“If you come in with the mentality that I cannot be fully free until everybody is fully free, it makes for better partners,” said Rev. Brown, in a local radio interview. “And if we are strategic in being courageous subversives for each other, then I think the world that our children will inherit will be better than the one that we’re in right now.”

Potential Preaching Angles:

God cares about all of our needs, and Jesus often paired spiritual renewal with the meeting of physical needs. So if we’re going to be like Jesus, it might mean helping people get enough healthy food to eat.

When Johnny Jennings of Ringgold, Georgia was 18, he made a life-changing visit to a Georgia Baptist children's home. Several children ran up to him and asked to be adopted. "That took my heart, right there," he says. While Jennings wasn't ready to adopt, he promised to do everything he could to help the home's young residents. A few decades later Jennings found a practical way to raise funds for the home—recycling. For the past 32 years Jennings, 86-years-old as of March 2017, has sold 810,063 pounds of paper, $20,275 worth of pennies, and countless pounds of recycled aluminum products. Over the years, he's given $400,000 to the home.

One of his friends told reporters, "Johnny normally loads his truck by himself, and that is a job in itself, and did I mention he is 86 years old and had two small strokes just two weeks ago?" But that didn't stop him from getting back to his paper route. When Jennings' got home from the hospital, he went right back to work. The friend continued, "That is just how he is, and he will not stop until the undertaker turns his toes up, that is what he tells everyone."

Jennings son said, "My dad doesn't see the $400,000. He sees the faces of those kids."

Dr. Robertson McQuilkin of Columbia International University tells a story about visiting his son in India. His son was working and living in the slums of Calcutta (a city of fifteen million) not far from the ministry of the Sisters of Charity, the group Mother Teresa began. McQuilkin was a seasoned world traveler, but here the squalor of poverty that he witnessed on the drive from the airport simply overwhelmed him. The smells of humanity and sewer water combined with a million people living on the streets brought him to tears.

His driver noticed this and said to him, "Don't worry, Dr. McQuilkin. In a few days you'll get used to it." McQuilkin responded, "That's exactly what I don't want to happen. I don't want to get used to it."

E. V. (Ed) Hill, who pastored Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, tells the story of how "Mama's" love and prayers changed his life. During the height of the Depression, Hill's real mother, who had five children of her own, didn't have enough food to go around, so she sent four-year-old Ed to live with a friend in a small country town called Sweet Home. Ed just called her Mama. As he was growing up in Sweet Home, Mama displayed remarkable faith which led her to have big plans for young Ed. Against nearly insurmountable obstacles, Mama helped Ed graduate from high school (the only student to graduate that year from the country school) and even insisted that he go to college.

She took Ed to the bus station, handed him the ticket and five dollars and said, "Now, go off to Prairie View College, and Mama is going to be praying for you." Hill claims that he didn't know much about prayer, but he knew Mama did. When he arrived at the college with a dollar and ninety cents in his pocket, they told him he needed eighty dollars in cash in order to register. Here's how Hill describes what happened next:

I got in line …, and the devil said to get out of line …, but I heard my Mama saying in my ear, "I'll be praying for you." I stood in line on Mama's prayer. Soon there was [another new student ahead of me], and I began to get nervous, but I stayed in line …. Just about the time [the other student] got all of her stuff and turned away, Dr. Drew touched me on the shoulder, and he said, "Are you Ed Hill?" I said, "Yes." "Are you Ed Hill from Sweet Home?" "Yes." "Have you paid yet?" "Not quite."

"We've been looking for you all this morning," [he said].

I said, "Well, what do [you] want with me?"

"We have a four-year scholarship that will pay your room and board, your tuition, and give you thirty dollars a month to spend."

And I heard Mama say, "I will be praying for you!"

Fred and Cheryl went to Haiti 25 years ago to pick up a child they had adopted. Addie was five-years-old. Her parents had been killed in a traffic accident that left her without a family. As she walked across the tarmac to board the plane, the tiny orphan reached up and slipped her hands into the hands of her new parents whom she had just met. Later they told us of this "birth" moment, how the innocent, fearless trust expressed in that physical act of grasping their hands seemed almost as miraculous as the times their two sons slipped out of the birth canal 15 and 13 years earlier.

That evening, back home in Arizona, they sat down to their first supper together with their new daughter. There was a platter of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. After the first serving, the two teenage boys kept refilling their plates. Soon the pork chops had disappeared and the potatoes were gone. Addie had never seen so much food on one table in her whole life. Her eyes were big as she watched her new brothers, Thatcher and Graham, satisfy their ravenous teenage appetites.

Fred and Cheryl noticed that Addie had become very quiet and realized that something was wrong—agitation … bewilderment … insecurity? Cheryl guessed that it was the disappearing food. She suspected that because Addie had grown up hungry, when food was gone from the table she might be thinking that it would be a day or more before there was more to eat. Cheryl had guessed right. She took Addie's hand and led her to the bread drawer and pulled it out, showing her a back-up of three loaves. She took her to the refrigerator, opened the door, and showed her the bottles of milk and orange juice, the fresh vegetables, jars of jelly and jam and peanut butter, a carton of eggs, and a package of bacon. She took her to the pantry with its bins of potatoes, onions, and squash, and the shelves of canned goods—tomatoes and peaches and pickles. She opened the freezer and showed Addie three or four chickens, a few packages of fish, and two cartons of ice cream. All the time she was reassuring Addie that there was lots of food in the house, that no matter how much Thatcher and Graham ate and how fast they ate it, there was a lot more where that came from. She would never go hungry again.

Cheryl didn't just tell her that she would never go hungry again. She showed her what was in those drawers and behind those doors, named the meats and vegetables, placed them in her hands. It was enough. Food was there, whether she could see it or not. Her brothers were no longer rivals at the table. She was home. She would never go hungry again.

Craig C. had been an alcoholic for more than a dozen years. He'd lost everything he had, including his wife and son, due to his selfishness and addiction. Things began to change after he gave his life to Christ, but he still fell regularly into his old habits. It didn't help that he'd lost his well-paying job and was clerking at a local grocery store that was well stocked with all his favorite drinks. After a few years of going back and forth between Christ and the bottle, he finally cut the ties, and, out of obedience to Christ, quit his job.

With no income and hope only in Christ, he was in desperate condition. After an interview with a sheet metal company down the street from his new church, he cried out to God. "God, if you give me this job I will give you my first paycheck." Surprisingly, he got the job.

He clearly remembers the day when he got his first paycheck. Stacks of bills needed to be paid. Penniless but determined, he endorsed it over to the church and walked it to the church office without waiting for the Sunday offering. That was the moment, he says, that changed his life because now he understood what it meant to trust God.

As of today, Craig has been sober for 25 years, he's a manager at that sheet metal company, and he serves as an elder at his local church.

Years ago, Dave Phillips and his wife, Lynn, had a talk about the callings they felt God was stirring in them. As they discussed what they were most passionate about, they agreed that bringing relief to suffering children and reaching the next generation with the gospel were at the top of the list. The thought of starting a relief agency was considered, but Dave's response was, "But that would mean I have to talk in front of people." By nature, Dave is a very quiet, behind-the-scenes man.

But after much prayer, Dave set aside his fears, and he and Lynn started Children's Hunger Fund out of their garage. Six weeks after CHF was launched, in January of 1992, he received a phone call from the director of a cancer treatment center in Honduras asking if there was any way he could obtain a certain drug for seven children who would die without it. Dave wrote down the name of the drug and told the director that he had no idea how to get this type of drug. They then prayed over the phone and asked God to provide.

As Dave hung up the phone, before he even let go of the receiver, the phone rang again. It was a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey asking Dave if he would have any use for 48,000 vials of that exact drug! Not only did they offer him eight million dollars' worth of this drug, but they told him they would airlift it anyplace in the world! Dave would later learn that the company was one of only two that manufactured this particular drug in the United States.

Within forty-eight hours, Dave had the drug sent to the treatment center in Honduras and to twenty other locations as well. It was then he believed that God was at work, validating his calling to this ministry.

Year after year, God continues to provide supernaturally.

When a hurricane hit South Florida, Norena's home was one of many that was severely damaged. The elderly woman received an insurance settlement, and the repair work began. However, when the money ran out, so did the contractor, leaving an unfinished home with no electricity. Norena has been living without power ever since.

The astounding part of this story is that the hurricane was not Katrina, but Andrew. Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992. Norena has been living in that dark, unfinished house for 15 years. No heat when the winter chill settled over South Florida. No air conditioning when the mercury climbed into the 90's and the humidity clung to 100 percent. Not one hot shower.

Without money to finish the repairs, Norena just got by with a small lamp and a single burner. Her neighbors didn't seem to notice the absence of power. Acting on a tip, the mayor of Miami-Dade got involved. It only took a few hours of work by electrical contractor Kent Crook to return power to the house.

CBS News says Norena plans to let the water get really hot, and then take her first bubble bath in a decade and a half. "It's hard to describe having [the electricity]…to switch on," she said. "It's overwhelming."

The great missionary explorer, David Livingstone, served in Africa from 1840 until his death in 1873. Pastors Robert Lewis and Wayne Cordeiro tell of an incident from Livingstone's life that illustrates why we need to be thankful in all things.

David Livingstone was eager to travel into the uncharted lands of Central Africa to preach the gospel. On one occasion, the famous nineteenth-century missionary and explorer arrived at the edge of a large territory that was ruled by a tribal chieftain. According to tradition, the chief would come out to meet him there; Livingstone could go forward only after an exchange was made. The chief would choose any item of Livingstone's personal property that caught his fancy and keep it for himself, while giving the missionary something of his own in return.

Livingstone had few possessions with him, but at their encounter he obediently spread them all out on the ground—his clothes, his books, his watch, and even the goat that provided him with milk (since chronic stomach problems kept him from drinking the local water). To his dismay, the chief took this goat. In return, the chief gave him a carved stick, shaped like a walking stick.

Livingstone was most disappointed. He began to gripe to God about what he viewed as a stupid walking cane. What could it do for him compared to the goat that kept him well? Then one of the local men explained, "That's not a walking cane. It's the king's very own scepter, and with it you will find entrance to every village in our country. The king has honored you greatly."

The man was right. God opened Central Africa to Livingstone, and as successive evangelists followed him wave after wave of conversions occurred.

Sometimes, in our disappointment over what we don't have, we fail to appreciate the significance of what God has given us.

Our Lord came down from life to suffer death; the Bread came down, to hunger; the Way came down, on the way to weariness; the Fount came down, to thirst. —Augustine, Sermon 78

He so loved us that, for our sake, He was made man in time, although through him all times were made. He was made man, who made man. He was created of a mother whom he created. He was carried by hands that he formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, he the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute. —Augustine, Sermon 188, 2

Author Elmer Towns writes:

My wife and I went through college by faith. If we had not prayed together daily through all our difficulties, I don't know how we would have made it. I earned $1 an hour for driving a school bus, which was just enough to pay for our necessities, but there wasn't even a dime left over for a Coca-Cola.

One evening the only thing in the kitchen cabinet was a can of tuna, so my wife served a tuna casserole. As we clasped hands to thank God for the food, I prayed, "God, you know we are broke. You know it's two days until payday. You know we are willing to fast until we get money, but we ask you to please take care of our needs."

As we finished praying, the laundry man came to the door. Ruth met him to say, "No laundry today; we can't afford to have anything cleaned." But he had not come to pick up our cleaning. The laundry man explained, "A few months ago your landlord asked me to pass along $20 to you to pay for having thawed the pipes for him. I had forgotten about it until today."

Some might say this was a coincidence, but Ruth and I say that our prayer together reminded the laundry man that he had $20 for us. He had been sent by God.

Doctors and nurses were doing everything possible for my wife, the mother of my seven children, yet I could see the hopelessness in their faces. Through an emergency C-section during the fifth month of her pregnancy, it was discovered the detached placenta had grown through the uterus and attached itself to her bladder. Bleeding was so profuse during surgery that Kris was given 30 units of blood. As the night wore on, her battle for life became desperate.

I cried out, "God, what do you want? I know you can heal her; why don't you?" In the middle of my darkest night, God began to speak. I wanted a miracle. He wanted to discuss his nature.

"Do you believe I am a loving God?" the Spirit asked.

Sitting beside my wife's bed, amid the chaos of ICU, I needed to answer that question. I could have said, "No, God cannot be a loving God. Look around here. My wife is dying. My newborn daughter may die. I have to go home and tell six children that their mother will not come home again, …ever."

But that night God gave me the grace to see him as he is.

"Yes," I told him. "You are a loving God. No matter what happens here tonight I will not question your nature."

Kris's condition worsened.

Kris understood that all life is precious and was determined to give our child all she had to help her in her struggle to live. In the end, it cost Kris her life. Grace lived 16 days.

"What about our plans, God?" I asked. "Who will teach the kids, guide them, and love them like their mother?"

God laid it on the heart of a man to head up an effort which became known as "Help Bring Hope to the Hoyt Kids." In six months, hundreds of people worked, sent money, donated supplies and poured love into our family. Churches provided food daily; on weekends, as many as 50 people were fed.

I received more than 500 letters, e-mails and cards from people who said they were praying for us.

I am writing this in the house God has given us. The medical bills are gone. The house is paid for. I am working as well as schooling my children.

One night I lay awake, tormented with the memory of Kris fighting for her life. I tried to remember her with the light of life in her eyes, but all I could see was death. I could feel myself falling into depression when suddenly before me was a vision of Kris, so perfectly alive in Christ, shining and healthy. No pain, just pure joy on her face.

"See her as she is now," the Holy Spirit seemed to say. "She is alive."

Someday we will all be together with Jesus and our daughter Grace.

I asked God for the life of my wife; I received instead a lesson on the nature of God. God is good. Armed with that knowledge, I have no fear for today or the future. God will always be enough…for any situation.

In the mid 1980s, my family moved to northern Saskatchewan to start a church. As a church planter, part of my support was funded by the local mission. Most months were difficult financially.

One week in April, when the ground is still frozen and snow-covered, we were down to only a few dollars in the bank. Our usual reaction to that need was to look for our own solution. This time, however, in a stroke of faith, I went before God and told him that we needed eggs, bread, and milk. I would wait upon him.

That afternoon, a man came to my little fix-it shop with a leaky teakettle. He said, "I know I could get another, but it's my favorite kettle. Please fix it." In a matter of minutes the job was done, and I didn't even charge him for it. But he pulled out a $10 bill and insisted that I take it—just enough to buy a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and a loaf of bread.

As he left, with a bit of pride in my faith decision, I thanked God, to which he replied: "Don't you wish you had asked for a half a beef?"

If Danny Simpson had known more about guns, he might not have needed to rob the bank. But in 1990, in Ottawa, Canada, this 24-year-old went to jail, and his gun went to a museum. He was arrested for robbing a bank of $6,000 and then sent to jail for six years. He had used a .45 caliber Colt semi-automatic, which turned out to be an antique made by the Ross Rifle Company, Quebec City, in 1918.

The pistol is worth up to $100,000—much more than Danny Simpson had stolen. If he had just known what he carried in his hand, he wouldn't have robbed the bank.

In other words, Danny already had what he needed.