Spiritual Food

Spiritual Food J esus Christ has said: “Man cannot live by bread alone.” (Matthew 4:4) This is also a teaching of the Quran. Apart from physical food, a person also needs spiritual food. Physical food is needed for your body and spiritual food is necessary for your intellectual development. Addressing the Prophet the Quran says in the chapter Ta Ha (Ta Ha): Do not regard with envy the worldly benefits We have given some of them, for with these We seek only to test them. The provision of your Lord is better and more lasting. (20:131) We take physical food through our digestive system and we take spiritual food through thinking and observation. Both are not two different items, in fact both are one and the same. In the very items that we take as food there is spiritual content also. We can extract this spiritual item through thinking and contemplation. For example, if you take some food like bread and rice or vegetable and fruit, you should think of how it was possible that soil was able to produce such beneficial items. Then you discover that it was due to God’s blessing. This kind of thinking inculcates love towards God Almighty. Acknowledging God Almighty, you say: ‘O Lord you are so merciful and compassionate towards mankind.’ Then, again you think that although these things were in the earth, but were there in terms of potential. Who made this potential into actuality? Then you realize that there are farmers, agriculturists, horticulturalists and others who performed great