“Give us this day our daily bread” – Matthew 6:11 – RSV
One cool thing my dad and I did on our ballpark road trip was read the Our Daily Bread devotional every morning. As we hit the road to our next stop, whoever wasn’t driving would read the day’s entry and the corresponding prayer that follows. It was a great way to set our minds on God, bringing us closer together as father and son, and as Father and sons. It’s a nice, tightly packaged bit of spiritual nourishment for the day.
I doubt Dad and I would have had as easy a time focusing on those devotionals were it not for travel plazas with Dunkin Donuts and a stash of Oreos and Chester’s puffcorn in the back seat. The “bread” in this line of the Lord’s Prayer can take many different forms, but physical food is always necessary. No doubt the disciples in Jesus’ day were focused on that when He first gave them these words. If you’re familiar with the book of Exodus you likely recall God providing the Israelites with heavenly bread – manna – on the ground each morning. And you may recall His clear instructions for them to only gather what they would need for that day. No storing it up or hoarding it. Any manna kept to the next day would immediately spoil and turn bitter, useless for anything. A very in-your-face reminder from God to trust in Him daily for their needs.
In our modern society, we likely think of “bread’ in more financial terms. Money is what we use to obtain our life needs, so our daily bread frames out more as a paycheck or income. Our modern compensation models start to disconnect us pretty quickly from God’s notion of daily bread, and I believe that makes this one of the more challenging lines of the Our Father. Most of us don’t get paid daily, while some of us aren’t getting paid at all. Financial stability and security seem to be the never-ending quest of our modern society. There’s a trillion-dollar industry filled with companies promising to help us plan for a secure and comfortable financial future. Heck, I used to work for one.
So “daily bread” is not really what most of us are looking for. If we’re being totally honest, we’re probably thinking more along the lines of “Give us this day our lifetime bread.” We’re not wired to deal with the notion of not having enough to last us past today, past this present moment and need. Yet I believe that’s exactly what God truly wants of us. Jesus is trying to point out, not just in this verse of the Our Father but many other places in His message, that total dependence on God is perhaps the very foundation of faithfulness.
Trusting in God for our daily bread takes faith to an entirely new, and incredibly uncomfortable level. But in doing so we learn that not only do we need to totally trust Him that what He provides us will always be enough. We also come to understand that there really is such a thing as too much. What would have happened if dad and I had read more than one day’s devotional at a time? Sure we’d have ingested more scripture and more insight, but would we have actually retained as much of it? Probably not. And doing so would have robbed our tomorrows of the joy of diving in fresh each day for a new portion. When we rely on God, our faith grows as we see Him work in exciting new ways to provide for us. Ways far beyond what we ever could have conceived on our own.
But on our own is how we so often want to be. We long for freedom, and we believe that to get there we just need independence, financial stability and security – always making sure we have enough. We chase the “American Dream”, working hard to save up for the life we want to someday be able to live, gambling our present days on a future that might not live up to our expectations. In doing so, we work harder than we have to and we gain less than we think we should have. We push ourselves harder than what God ever does, feeling way more exhausted, and seeing far less progress. Jesus challenges us with these words to shift our perspective from laboring to try to secure our uncertain futures to living each day as it comes, trusting God’s plan and seeking our security in His loving arms. The Christian life is not easy, yet traveling with Jesus means we’re never loaded beyond what we can carry.
What the Lord is calling us to with this verse is to understand that the true path to freedom is one of total dependence on Him: surrendering our desire for control, trading our own faulty, unreliable efforts to build a life of security, and letting go. Falling into the Father’s loving arms and trusting that He’s always going to catch us. He’s always going to feed us. That no matter what each day holds, as long as we have Him, we have enough.
Digging deep we realize how much this verse, along with the one that follows it, challenges us as believers. It gets to the essence of what it truly means to follow Jesus – to not only pray like Him but to live like Him.
Give us this day our daily bread – I’ve got to stop trying to fill my own storehouse and let go of trying to secure my own future. The Father’s always got me, his storehouse is always full, and I already have the key. I just need to ask and to trust.