Give us this day our daily bread.
That simple
sentence—the center of the Lord’s Prayer—is both deep and shallow, like water,
like breath—the most straightforward and yet deeply important of things. Firstly,
bread is food, obviously. We need food to survive, and too many in this world
do not have it. Through the years, we have taken many groups from Grace-Red
River to volunteer through Feed My Starving Children or a similar organization,
and every time we go they have us watch a similar video, which typically shows
women in Haiti (or somewhere similarly impoverished) making patties of clay to
give their children something to eat when there is no food.
Across the
world, it is estimated that 820 million people go to bed hungry each day—a number
unfathomably high in the 21st century. This is a problem not of
scarcity but of distribution and willpower. The human race hasn’t cared enough
to make sure everyone is fed. So, when we pray “Give us this day our daily
bread,” it is a reminder both that the only sure source of nourishment is God,
and also that we-human beings have not done our duty in feeding the world. If
you’re hungry, it is all but impossible to hear a word of promise for anything
deeper. First you need actual bread, then you will understand your need of something
deeper.
Naturally,
daily bread is also not only bread. Daily bread consists of other kinds of
nourishment. We need a safe home; a safe job; a chance to flourish; health care;
and we all need love. Our daily bread is varied and complex, and each of us has
different needs—but needs they are. As people of God, we strive for a better
world where these needs are all met. Still, we understand who it is that
provides for them, so when we pray, we remind ourselves of our littleness and
how everything we have is ours as a gift, surely nothing we have earned.
Once those
basic needs are met, then we can go a level deeper, and understand the primary
meaning of daily bread. Jesus himself proclaims that he is the “bread of life.”
God’s presence comes to us daily—certainly in the bread of communion—but also
in all of our varied nourishment. Once we are fed by bread; once we are safe
from persecution; once we are surrounded by love; then we are in a place to
receive the bread that will never run out—Christ’s body broken for us—a
reminder of the loaves and fish that Jesus once multiplied for a crowd of
enormous size.
This bread requires neither good weather nor good farming.
I am
comforted by this reminder that our true nourishment will never run out,
because the world so often tells us there is not enough. There are times of
scarcity. Times when the harvest is bad. Times when we don’t know if the kids
will be in school, stay in school. Whether we will have a job. Whether there
will be enough to retire. For many of you, you may be living through those
times. Yet, we have a God who provides daily—often against our expectations.
Our daily bread may be hard to swallow; it may even be bitter; but it is ours
regardless.
God’s daily
bread does not mean that your job will be safe or even that your kids will be
safe. It doesn’t mean you will live fabulously or die at a nice old age. Rather,
it means that there is a force at the center of the universe that pulls us
toward what is good. That might seem like little comfort in your most fearful
moments, but it is a promise that persists even in the face of harsh realities.
Everything else is temporary, like the food on the table. Daily bread speaks to
a deeper reality where sin is covered by grace.
Once, when
Jesus met a woman at the well, he told her not to worry about the water she is drawing
from the earth. Don’t worry about water? But water is life! And, yet, Jesus
knows better, because it’s not this water that lasts but living water that
comes from a source unlike the one we are accustomed to. It is water without
disease from a river that never runs dry. Living water and daily bread. These
are not the things we are accustomed to eating and drinking—those are just a
hint of the true bread that is Christ’s body and the living water that flows
from the river of life.
As I finish
up my final Sundays with you here at Grace-Red River, I am acutely aware that
not everything lasts. I daresay we have had more change than any of us would
have wished in the past six months. I had a professor who once explained that
in a church you can change one thing at a time—anything more than that makes
people nervous. Right now, that guidance has completely gone out the window; so
much is changing all at once. In this moment, it is crucial to remember that we
have a God who provides daily bread and living water—things that are not
subject to the vagaries of life on this planet. At the center of life is the
God who created us from the dirt, breathed into us to give us life, and who
will redeem this body when it has long returned to the dust. That is the kind
of nourishment we need—not only momentary bread, but also an awareness of the
eternal weight of glory that God bestows on his creatures—his children.
So, when we
say “give us today our daily bread,” we may be asking for much more than even
we realize. We are asking for God to feed the world; we are professing our
willingness to do what it takes to be part of that good, tough work; we are remembering
communion and the body of Christ that is given to us; and we are reminding
ourselves of the weight of eternity that will outlast us—that our bodies are
mortal, but awaiting us is a body that will never die.
Daily bread
comes to us even in a changing world, especially when things feel dark. And,
yet, it is also still bread. Just bread. The simplest of things. The end of a
harvest that is tough in a year that is tough surrounded by people feeling the
same weight of grief. That is when that bread is most powerful. It is when we need
it most. Your daily bread.
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