I'm re-teaching myself Greek. At first, it was a fun refresher that made me feel confident in my abilities and marvel at how much I had retained from my classes two years ago.
Then I hit chapter 10 and realized I knew less than I thought. Chapters seemed denser. The workbook, more laborious. I started putting off translation working, realizing that it was time-consuming and painful. I'd find myself flipping through the index for para for the 100th time. I'd grow frustrated with the paradigms. Annoyed with words like ora, which seemingly has fifteen root variations.

Yet, for all the agony I go through, there are the pieces I translate that remind me why I do this. It was the last piece to translate before I could close the book and call it a day. Sentence 10 of Chapter 22. 'Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, You are not seeking me because you saw miracles, but because you ate from the bread and you were satisfied."

And you were satisfied. I let that part of the sentence reverberate in my head, savoring that sentence. I looked the passage up in my handy dandy pocket size ESV to verify that I translated it correctly and it read, "Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

Jesus says this to crowds the day after he had fed the five thousand. In my head, the plot was always more like dinner and a movie. Jesus divvies out some bread, everyone chows down while he talks from the mountaintop about being the bread of life and they listen, but they focus more on their eating than his words because they are uncontrollably hungry.

In reality, the crowds had eaten and filled their bellies. As my sister retold this biblical story in one of her own short stories:
 We were many and we were hungry but he gave us the five loaves and two fishes that he had turned into many and the many of us uttered many prayers of thanksgiving for the many bellies no longer rumbling and aching and
squealing with hunger.  We gave thanks especially for our own quieted bellies.  We stretched out in the grass on our backs, sunning our full bellies.

As the story goes, the people relax with their full bellies, enjoying the bread that is satisfying their hunger. But, when their stomaches start to growl again, they find Jesus again, to make the rumblings go away so they may not be consumed with their hunger. 

I wonder how often I do the same thing. I wonder how often I go to God because something is wrong and he has proven faithful in it in the past. I wonder how many times I've missed him in the quest for his gifts. 


I am too easily satisfied. May I learn to seek the one who eternally satisfies instead of laboring for that which passes by.