Why the hunger you can’t name might be the most important thing about you

There is a hunger that doesn’t have a name.

You know the one. It’s not the hunger you feel at noon when you skipped breakfast. It’s deeper than that. It’s that low-grade ache, that sense that something is missing. It’s the feeling of incompleteness you can’t quite locate or explain.

Some of you have felt it in a quiet moment when everything in your life is going well, nothing is wrong, and yet there it is. That restlessness. That vague sense that you were made for something you haven’t quite found yet.

C.S. Lewis said something about this that I keep coming back to. He said: if you find in yourself a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that you were made for another world. That’s not depression. That’s not dysfunction. That’s the imprint of your origin.

Sunday’s sermon was about what that hunger is for. And where it leads.

The Original Table

To get there, I had to start at the beginning. In Genesis, God made a garden. In the middle of that garden he put a tree. It was called the tree of life. And eating from it meant something very specific: ongoing access to life itself. Not a one-time transaction. A daily returning to the source.

The design was that humanity would live in that garden, near that tree, in an ongoing relationship with the God who put it there. Not religion. Not performance. Relationship.

And then something went wrong. They chose the other tree. And God, in one of the most tender and painful moments in all of Scripture, sent them out. He put angels with a flaming sword to guard the way back. The table was closed. Not forever. But it was closed.

And the hunger that had always been designed to be fed at that tree suddenly had nowhere to go.

What the Manna Couldn’t Do

Centuries later, Israel is wandering in the wilderness. They’re hungry. And God provides. Every morning, six days a week, bread from heaven covers the ground. The people call it manna. Literally saying what is it?

It was real. It was grace. God fed a nation in a desert for forty years. That is not nothing.

But it wasn’t the tree of life. Every morning the hunger came back. The manna could sustain life for the day. It could not give back what had been lost in the garden.

Daily provision is not the same as permanent restoration.

This matters for us. Because most of what we reach for to feed the unnamed hunger is some version of manna. Real. Good, even. But temporary. The career, the relationship, the achievement, the milestone. They satisfy for a season. And then the hunger comes back. And we wonder what’s wrong with us.

Nothing is wrong with you. You were designed for something the manna can’t give.

The Wrong Question

In the passage, the crowd that has followed Jesus is pushing back. They want a task list. They say: “what must we do to be doing the works of God?” Give us the religious performance. Tell us how to earn this.

And Jesus collapses the whole task list into one word: believe. Not perform. Believe.

This makes most people uncomfortable – myself included, honestly. Because a task list gives you control. If I perform well enough, I have leverage. Belief requires surrender. It means letting go of the idea that you can make yourself worthy of what’s on the table.

Most of us secretly prefer the task list. But belief is the only door there is.

Eating Once vs. Eating Again

Here’s the part of Sunday’s message that I couldn’t stop thinking about. There’s a verb shift in John 6 that most English translations completely flatten. And it changes everything.

When Jesus first talks about eating his flesh, he uses the Greek word phago. It’s the standard word for eating. Often used for a one-time act. The ancestors ate the manna. Phago. Past tense, done.

But starting in verse 54, he switches to a different word: trogo. It means to gnaw, to chew, to feed with deliberate enjoyment. And it appears as a present participle, which in Greek means: continuously, habitually, repeatedly.

The one who keeps eating. Not the one who ate once. The one who keeps coming back.

This is the contrast Jesus builds in verse 58: your ancestors ate the manna (phago – once, past, done) and they died. Whoever continuously eats this bread (trogo – ongoing, habitual, returning) will live forever.

He is not offering a single decisive bite that locks in eternal life like a cosmic transaction.He is offering a person. A relationship. A continuous, returning, ongoing feeding from the one who is himself the source of life.

The tree of life in the garden operated on one-time logic. One bite. Permanent consequence. That’s why God had to prevent it.

Jesus offers something better than the tree of life ever did. He offers himself. And you don’t eat once and stop being hungry. You come back. You come back again. That is what you were made for.

The Door That Cannot Close

Here is the part I wanted to say slowly.

In verse 37, Jesus says something I had to sit with. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

That phrase, I will never cast out, is ou me ekbalo in Greek. It is a double negative. Which means it is the strongest negation the Greek language is capable of producing. Not unlikely. Not rarely. Categorically impossible.

I will absolutely never, under any circumstances, for any reason, cast out anyone who comes to me.

The cherubim guarded the way back to the tree of life. The sword was real. The barrier was real. For a long time, that table was closed.

But the table is open now. And the door cannot be shut against anyone who comes to it.

That is for the person who drove to the parking lot and couldn’t make themselves walk in. For the person reading this who thinks they’ve done too much, been away too long, wandered too far. For the person carrying something they haven’t told anyone and think disqualifies them from what God is offering.

Ou me ekbalo. The strongest negation available. Nothing you have done can undo what he did.

Keep Coming Back

Here’s the landing.

In the beginning, God set a table. A tree in the middle of a garden. Ongoing access to the source of life. Humanity and God together, eating, abiding, living.

The table was closed. The sword went up. And for a long time there was provision, real provision, but not restoration. Not the full return.

And then Jesus comes. And he says: I am the bread of life. I am what the tree was pointing toward. I am the source, in person, in the flesh, inviting you to come and keep coming.

And then he goes to a cross. And the cross is where the sword falls. It falls on him. Everything that made the table inaccessible, every weight of the brokenness that barred the way back, came down on the one who is himself the bread of life.

He was broken so you could be fed.

When Peter is asked if he’s leaving with the crowd that walks away, he says: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

That is honest faith. Not: I have it figured out. Not: I’ve resolved all my questions. Just: there is nowhere else to go. And I know it.

That’s the trogo posture. Not one decisive moment. A life of returning. Again and again, because you know where the source is and you know there is no substitute for it.

The table is open. Whatever you’re carrying, come to it.