Healing Rays of Righteousness

“This, then, is how you should pray: … Give us today our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11).

I think the Scriptures indicate that our “daily bread” is about more than just our food, which, along with water, is the most basic of our physical needs. Even in our time the word “bread” is often used to talk about all kinds of food, and it is also used to talk about the money or job needed for all our daily provisions.

In the biblical setting of this prayer, Jesus would want us to know that in asking for “bread” we are asking for our basic needs to be satisfied. In Exodus 16:4 God tells Moses to instruct the people about gathering the manna that he would be sending them during their wilderness journey. He says, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day.”

The emphasis on God’s instruction is in the people gathering only what is needed for that day, and to also trust God to faithfully supply enough for each and every day.

So, when we put these two words together – “daily” and “bread” – we are asking “our Father” to sustain us by providing our physical and material needs in sufficient amount for each day. This would suggest that we should be very grateful when our daily physical and material needs are supplied.

By giving us this guide to our manner of praying, Jesus is teaching us to trust God for our daily needs. He is teaching us to believe “our Father” hears and knows our needs. He is also teaching us to learn contentment and a trusting relationship with God’s daily provision. These attributes seem so foreign to modern thinking.

Jesus teaches us to pray for “daily bread” – not for gathering or storing up for tomorrow. We are taught to pray each day for the bread we need for that day. This is a difficult lesson to learn when our culture continually tries to convince us that having more is better and having the best is gratifying. As Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:32-33, we are not to be like the pagans who devote their whole lives to the pursuit of material things and trust in their own powers to provide them. Instead, we are to “seek first his (God’s) kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

A few verses earlier, Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do no sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”  (Matthew 6:25-26).

However, another question also needs our consideration. What does it mean to pray for daily bread in our cultural context of affluence where most of us have more than we need for the day? And yet all around us in the world there are those who don’t have their basic needs met.

Please note that this is a corporate prayer, “Give us.”  It is not just about us. We don’t just pray for our material provision, but also that “our Father” would supply the needs of all his people, throughout the world. Jesus would have us understand the prayer to be both a petition for our own needs as well as an intercession on behalf of the others who have need of bread.

I do believe that God provides more than enough food for all the world. And that he gives some more and some less with the expectation that we will share the supply with each other. When we get more than the daily bread we need, it is not to hold on to it for our own security and tomorrow’s comfort. We are given the more so we can share it with those who need it. In doing so we bless others and are blessed with God’s goodness to all the world.

Our prayer for “daily bread” challenges us to be part of the healing of the world in our sharing and ensuring that those who are hungry will also graciously receive their “daily bread.”

However, the question keeps coming back to us daily: Will we who have more from God than we need, share with those who have less than they need? Will we choose to learn contentment so that our excess can become their provision of daily bread from God.

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – March 11, 2020
http://www.geigler13.wordpress.com
Ray M. Geigley