Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters

First Published: 1st of June, 2022

People who do not believe in the unseen often find it difficult to navigate life. They live entirely in the physical as though we are a body without a spirit. The truth is, man is a spirit with a body attached, and not the other way around.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, King Solomon, also the wisest mortal man on earth, gifted by God with wisdom, advises us to “cast your bread upon the waters.” He further says that “after many days you shall find it back.”

To cast your bread upon the waters means to give it away or give it up. If you cast your bread upon the waters, you cannot get that same bread back at the same time, but its value will come back to you in greater proportion if you did it for a righteous cause and not wastefully. These beautiful words embody two universal truths:

1. When you do good, it comes back to you with interest, and
2. In order for better things to come into your life, you sometimes have to watch the destruction of things you once cherished.

In essence, you must have the “power of letting go.”

Often, it is difficult for us to let go of material things which we deem so valuable. Nevertheless, it is important to do so in order to gain bigger, better things. In the autumn, the trees are not afraid to shed their leaves because they know that in the spring, they will regrow brand new leaves. In the same way, if you do not let go of the stagnant things which must be gone, you cannot acquire the better things that are yet to come. When you understand these universal truths, you no longer feel the pain of loss over material things. People who do not understand these universal truths live in only the physical realm, and are often angry at things that should really make them happy.

People who live only in the physical realm are tightfisted. They do not like to loose earthy treasures. But what they fail to realize is that the material things that they are holding on to are really holding on to them and gluing them to the spot. They are unable to grow spiritually, and so their joy stifles. Life becomes a daily grind which revolves around greed, fueled by a desire to acquire more and more – only to be forced to leave it all to the elements at the end of their lives.

The preacher further goes on to tell us, “give a portion to seven, and also to eight, for you do not know what evil shall be upon the earth.” In these words, the preacher is teaching us to lay our treasures up in heaven, because on earth, they cannot do us much good. The world is full of pestilences and both natural and manmade disasters. And that’s why we must trust in the unseen. That is why we must believe that the good we do comes back to us–either in this life or the next. Only by understanding these universal truths will we be empowered to give more than we take. If we understand these universal truths, there will be less fighting, murders, and wars because people will feel less pain over the loss of material things.