Devotionals

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Give Us Our Daily Bread

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Lord's Prayer, especially the part where Jesus teaches us to pray, "give us this day our daily bread." On the face of it, there seems to be little possibility for misunderstanding the meaning of the request. But as it turns out, this brief petition for daily bread has baffled and challenged the faith of many.

Some have identified the bread in this prayer with the bread of the Lord’s Supper. It is a natural association since The Lord’s Prayer finds its place in every celebration of the Sacrament. So, it is not unreasonable to think of this petition as a prayer that God will give us the blessing of daily gathering at the Lord’s table.

Some have thought of the daily bread as the spiritual food of the word of God. Just the other night at our men’s spirituality group, as we were discussing prayer, one of the fellows offered just this interpretation of the daily bread. He told us about an old hymn that is not sung much anymore. It goes like this:

"Break thou the bread of life,
Dear Lord, to me,
As thou didst break the loaves
Beside the sea.
Beyond the sacred page
I seek thee, Lord,
My spirit pants for thee,
O living word."

So the prayer has been taken to be a request for sound teaching, for true doctrine, for the living word. Who can doubt that such spiritual instruction is truly food for our souls?

Some have taken the daily bread to mean Jesus himself. Jesus, in fact, referred to himself as the bread of life, so it is not impossible to understand it this way. It becomes then a prayer for a closer relationship with the living Christ day-by-day.

All these interpretations are conceivable, but I don’t think they are very likely. I don't think that we need to stretch the prayer around a metaphor of bread in order to grasp its meaning. Instead, I believe we can just take the text in its plain sense, which is as a prayer for daily sustenance.

Though this is likely the plain and simple meaning of the prayer, there is nothing simple about its implications for how we live our lives from day-to-day. I can’t help but hear in this prayer the echo of old Jewish story. It goes like this:

A long time ago, when Moses the great deliverer led the people of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, he brought them to a dry and barren place. In that wilderness between slavery and the Promised Land there was little food. The people soon began to fear that they would die of hunger in that terrible place. They began to complain to Moses their leader. "What are we, fools? It would have been better if we had stayed in Egypt and sat by our stew pots and ate our bread. But no, we followed you out into this wilderness so you could kill us with hunger."

Now Moses loved this petulant people, so naturally, he was worried. He prayed to God and God told him, "Don’t worry, I'm going to rain bread from heaven for them, and each day the people can go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I'll test them, to see whether they will trust me or not."

That night the people went to bed hungry, and they woke up hungrier still the next morning. But when they poked their heads out of their tents, they saw a strange sight. The ground all around their camp was covered with dew. And when the dew lifted as the sun rose they saw the surface of the desert covered with a fine flaky stuff that looked an awful lot like frost. Of course, they don't get frost in the desert so the people scratched their heads and asked each other, "What the heck is it?" Which in the Hebrew language is "Manna?" Moses answered them, "It is the bread from heaven that the Lord promised. Everybody go to your tents and get a pot. Gather up as much of this stuff as you in your family will need to eat today. But listen now. Don’t try to keep any overnight because it will go bad.”

So they all had enough to eat that day, for which they were thankful. But naturally, some of them filled up an extra pot or two to keep for the next day. After all, who knew whether this stuff would be on the ground again in the morning? Well, when they opened the pots the following morning, what a stench! The "what-the-heck-is-it" had turned foul and was full of worms. Moses said, "I told to so." "Who knew?" the people said. After that, the people gathered only enough "what-the-heck-is-it" for the coming day. Except on Friday, when they were allowed gather two day's worth. You see, God didn't want them to work on the Sabbath, so God thought it would be okay if they kept some "what-the-heck-is-it" over Friday night to eat on Saturday. They did, and it didn’t rot. "Thank God." the people said.

I don't know how you hear this story, but to me it sounds and awful lot like, "Give us this day our daily bread." The old Jewish story and the somewhat newer Jewish prayer (Jesus was a Jew after all) both teach us to depend upon God every day to provide us with what we need in that day.

Two Rabbis were once talking. The first said, "The portion of a day in its day, because the One who created the day created sustenance for the day." The second replied, "Just so my friend. One who possesses what can be eaten today, and says, 'What shall I eat tomorrow?' is one of little faith."

Whether we are thinking about food, or any of the other provisions of God, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to live by faith one day at a time. It forbids the anxious worry that characterizes our lives when we do not trust God. Only a few moments after he taught them how to pray, Jesus said to his disciples, "Don't worry about your life, always asking ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ God knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today." In other words, pray like this: "Give us this day our daily bread."

Oh, and one more thing. Jesus did not teach us to pray "give me this day my daily bread." He taught us to pray, "give us this day our daily bread." As one commentator has said, "The problem of world hunger is not that there is not enough to go around; there is enough and to spare. The problem is not the supply of life's essentials; it is the distribution of them. This prayer teaches us not to be selfish in our prayers. It teaches us to pray not just for ourselves, but on behalf of others. Very few of us have to worry about where our next meal will come from. But this is not so for millions of others. When we pray, "give us this day our daily bread" we pray also on behalf of those millions. And when our pantries and cupboards and bank accounts are well provisioned, the answer to this prayer is close at hand.

I think that "The Lord's Payer" may be a misnomer. This prayer, as it is turns out, is really "The Disciple's Prayer." It is a prayer that challenges us to a deeper commitment to seeking and doing the will of God. It is a prayer that calls on us to look for the coming of God's reign of peace and justice. It is a prayer that shows us that that way to seek God's will is to trust that God will provide what we need every day as we need it. This trust means that every day we are called to a vital relationship with the living God who can both meet our needs and move us to meet the needs of others.

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