“GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD”
Prayer for food was one of the most common prayers in antiquity. God, who
supplied daily Bread to his people for 40 years in the wilderness can be trusted
for sustenance.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Does it not seem strange that in the very center of this great prayer, our Lord
should suddenly switch
the emphasis from something as majestic as the will of God to a subject as
earthy as bread? But really this is just like Him.
Therefore it should not surprise us unduly that Christ should include in this
great prayer a request for food. It is, after all, the very basis of our existence.
The provision of food for the life of man is discussed all through the Word of
God. Initially God gave man all that was needed to support and sustain his life
without working for it. But after the first couple deliberately defied God’s
instructions and willfully refused to cooperate with His will, this entire
arrangement altered. The categorical statement made to Adam after he sinned
was, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the
ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will
return. (Gen. 3:19)
As the carpenter craftsman, working in Joseph’s woodworking shop in
Nazareth, Jesus knew all about this. He later had to support His widowed
mother and young siblings by the strength of His muscles, skill of His hands,
and sweat of His brow. Hacking and chopping, sawing and planing, shaping
and fitting the tough, twisted olive wood and hard, heavy acacia timber that
grew in Galilee was no child’s play. It was back-breaking toil that turned trees
int cattle yokes, plows, tables, and candlesticks, that He could sell for a few
shekels to buy bread.
Why then did He dare to ask now that He be given bread? Was it not God’s
decree that man must earn his bread? Was it not part and parcel of the whole
plan for man on the planet that if a man did not work he should not eat? (see 2
Th 3:8-12) Could anyone feel exempt from this principle? It must have been a
revolutionary concept to Christ’s disciples. A little later on in this same
discourse with them, He elaborates on this concept of working and worrying in
our constant struggle to survive. We must examine it to see what He meant.
The principles are fairly plain and straightforward. Basically He teaches us
that the natural resources of earth are supplied for us by God our Father. They
are more than adequate to meet our basic needs. Just as He provides for the
wild birds and the wild flowers, so He has provided enough for us. In the same
way that birds must search for their food, and that flowers must extend their
leaves to the sun for sunlight, and their roots into the soil for moisture and
nutrients, so we must expend ourselves. God does not drop grubs down the
gullets of young birds or does He give handouts to lazy people who simply sit
in the shade and do nothing.
Also, He would have us understand that all the many resources put at our
disposal are really gifts from God. In (James 1:17) we are told, “Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of
heavenly lights.” So, be it soil or sunshine, rain or rare elements in the earth,
air or ammonia, plants or animals, whatever is essential for the production of
food has its origin with our heavenly Father. It is He who has bestowed this
bounty upon the earth. It is through His generosity that the supply is sustained,
even in the fact of our extravagance, waste and selfish exploitation of the
planet.
Christ then instructs us in very plain and simple language to stop to stop
worrying and fretting over the provision of bread. He assures us that if, unlike
Adam and Eve who refused to acknowledge the primacy of God’s will, we do
just that, seeking first and foremost to cooperate with our Father’s wishes, our
bread will indeed be supplied.
“SEEK YOU FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD, AND HIS
RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND ALL THESE THINGS ((bread included)) SHALL
BE ADDED UNTO YOU” (MT. 6:33)
Any man or woman prepared to put God’s wishes first in life is bound to have
bread. Only the one who puts God first in his life, who above all else desires to
see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven, is entitled to ask God to give
them bread.
This is an important point that many miss. Millions of people pray this prayer
who never put God’s will or even complying with His commands. Yet
thoughtlessly and gladly, they will ask God to give them bread.
It is a mark of the generosity of God Father that in spite of all this He still
sends rain on the just and unjust, still supplies sufficient for saint and sinner,
still maintains the plant life of a planet, the majority of whose population
ignores Him.
But those of us who know Him as our Father, who sense His love and concern
for us, come daily, not only asking in humility for our bread but deeply grateful
for the food already supplied.
Perhaps it is natural for us to take our daily food for granted. Especially is this
true in our modern technological age with its affluence and welfare
governments. But for those of us old enough to recall the dreadful hunger of
the depression years, daily bread is still a significant aspect of life for which we
are glad to pray and give thanks. While for those of us who have had to live
abroad where poverty, starvation, famine, begging, and horrible hunger are a
way of life, this petition is full of meaning. For uncounted millions of men and
women, there is no assurance whatever that there will be bread today, much
less bread tomorrow. They may not have had bread yesterday or the day before
that.
So another concept which was clearly in our Lord’s heart and mind was that, as
God’s people, we should pray that all His children everywhere might have
bread today. Of course most of us are so bust with our own lives, we are so
preoccupied with padding our own nests and feeding our own already
overstuffed stomachs that we really do not take time to care much about the
hungry elsewhere.
It will be noted Jesus said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” “He did not say,
“Give me all I can consume on myself.” When He was among us as a man, it
is deeply moving and touching to see His concern for the hungry crowds. And
He did not spare either Himself or His disciples in seeing to it that they were
properly fed.
This “daily bread” on which I feed will bring about subtle yet profound
changes in my personal life-style. After all, it is Christ Himself who, by His
Spirit, is permeating my whole being. Gradually I shall find myself less and
less preoccupied with the sham and front, pretense and pretext of the secular
scene. Pomp and pride and passion that command and demand so much of
mine will no longer hold me in their grip. My foolish pride, my trivial vanity
will be seen for the childish, self-centered characteristics that they are.
It has been said, “You are what you eat.” If we feed our souls and spirits on
God’s bread from heaven, it follows that is what we shall become. This is a
powerful principle. It explains why the Master included this apparently earthy
petition in His noble prayer.