It is no surprise to people who know me that I like to eat. I have gone through periods of bread making and am currently enjoying home baked sourdough bread from my friend Ruth Sadiq who has made a business out of taking weekly orders for her bread. Pickup day is Thursday, and a highlight of every week we order is driving to her house, seeing all the loaves and knowing that one has our name on it.

So, the cover feature of the latest issue of The Atlantic caught my eye “I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America.” The author collected 555 recommendations and traveled 13,000 miles over months to find the answer and write the story.

How did the author pull it off? A cover story about bread?

“Naturally, I told my superiors, this investigation would bring me into contact with the entire arc of human history,” explained writer Caity Weaver. That raises the stakes. Weaver also explains how the word “bread” can represent much more than just literal bread. This is true in several languages. Bread can be a connotational synonym for all of life.

The author describes approaching celebrities and the like in case they wanted to participate. Most were not interested, or at least their publicists weren’t interested in asking their clients if they were interested in participating.

Top vote-getters in the chain restaurants included Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden and Red Lobster. That’s interesting because as I read I remember the breads these restaurants served even though it’s been a few years since I have been to any of them. Weaver also went to small gourmet restaurants in different parts of the country. One bread snob—my description, not hers—said that restaurant chains should not be considered because he never ate at them. And there was a strong opinion among some business-minded restauranteurs that good free bread served before any paid food even hit the plate was a bad idea. Don’t fill up on free bread before you’ve even taken a bite of the food you pay for.

But the free-bread-thing predated restaurants. The article talks about that. It started at home with guests before we had restaurants.

The explanation makes me remember that in Russia—one of the countries where the word “bread” is a metaphor for way more than just bread—there’s a tradition that you are to greet every visitor to your home with bread and salt. To be hospitable to a visitor, you need to offer them bread. The same was true not so very long ago even here.

Free bread is more elemental than we realize. It’s a longing we don’t know we have. It’s so basic.

We taught the kindergartners about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness a few weeks ago. As I prepared the lesson, I realized it was almost certain that none of us really knew what hunger even is. Forty days without food—can you even imagine it? The children couldn't, and I was in the same boat. Yet we all recall how hungry we feel just skipping a single meal. Forty whole days! Ugh! Yeah, that’s really bad, hard, sick, whatever.

You’re hungry; turn these stones to bread.

He had to want it really badly, and Jesus didn’t fall for it.

But we fall for it all the time. Our whole lives are forty days in the wilderness without food. The Tempter shows earthly stones and tries to convince us that, though they look like stones, little boulders of earth and mineral, they’re actually breads for the taking. And we’re so hungry for the bread God has created us to eat that we settle for the snake’s imposters.

There is a bread that comes down from heaven. We cannot bake it ourselves. It is free. When we eat this bread, we are free.

As I read about the author roaming the country, talking with different patrons and restaurant owners, I’m struck by the passion different people have about great bread and great cost. The wilderness-wandering bread of promise we cannot have is the one we long for. The glorious truth of it is that the best free bread in all the world is not available in stores. We want to pay for something we can only get for free. The price is more than we could ever afford, and we don’t have the right currency anyway. There is no hope in ourselves or the substitutes of the snake.

Jesus took the bread, broke it and said “This is my body, which is for you…”

The first time his followers ate Jesus' broken bread, they didn't realize what was happening—this was the bread they had every Passover meal they’d ever eaten. But life, death, sword and spirit opened their eyes, and these seeing eyes stayed open until they closed in death. And then opened after death to a new feast, to the vision of the lamb and a new table.

It’s afternoon. Lorraine is making the tea, first warming the blue pot, a gift from Jim and Miriam.

I take the bread knife, cut two slices of Ruth’s bread for us, and put them in the toaster.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine;

Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.

I get out Marr’s grape jelly and a jar of blueberry preserves we bought at the farm while staying at friends' lake house. The toaster pops, and I take the slices out.

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

It’s spring that feels like winter. Snows that are flowers of ornamental fruit trees start to fall, tentative at first and then at a steadier rate with unseasonably cold wind.

Born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

Lorraine pours tea into two mugs, each with a different bird; with the falling whiteness outside, they’re slightly out-of-season. We’ve had them since Myrna gave them to us at our wedding.

As we sit down, I say, “Tomorrow is Communion.”

“That’s right,” she says.

The dog mills under the table looking for crumbs.

This is our story, our new song of praise every day.