Prayer for Daily Bread

“Give us this day our daily bread.” –Matthew 6:11 (KJV).

This petition in the Lord’s Prayer sounds very simple but it bears so much weight.  It acknowledges our dependence on God.  “Lord, we turn to You for our daily bread.”  To the God who made the world and all things in it, we look for daily sustenance.  The Bible tells us that He ‘owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10b).  We also are taught “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17a).  This petition for daily bread does not imply that we lead a lazy, unproductive life, that we not work for our sustenance and needs.  But it does teach us that God in His providence will allow our work to be productive so that we can reap the benefits of our labors and have what we need to sustain us.  We can agree with King David in his prayer of praise:  “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).  The position of the prayer for daily bread is noteworthy as well.  We have just prayed, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” (v. 10).  The next petition following the daily bread request is for forgiveness:  “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (v 12).  In between seeking God’s will and begging His forgiveness is the prayer for the most basic of human needs:  food, daily bread.  Does God care that we have what we need to sustain life?  Yes.  Think of the children of Israel after their escape from Egyptian bondage.  They wandered in the wilderness with no means of feeding the array of people.  God provided manna from heaven day by day and they survived the rigors of the desert.

In his book entitled Living the Lord’s Prayer (Minneapolis, IN: Bethany House, 2008, p. 135), David Timms writes of this petition for daily bread:  “This short, earthy request corrects any effort on our part to separate the sacred and the secular.  Daily bread bridges any gap we may create or encourage between the spiritual and the material.  Thus this fourth petition—the hinge of the prayer in many ways—guides us to consider the materiality of our lives.”  We need to examine the deeds as well as the teachings of Jesus to see that He did not separate the spiritual and the material.  He fed the soul with truths that revealed God, but when the hungry crowds surrounded Him to listen to His teachings, he also provided the food they needed to assuage hunger.  He poured out his heart in prayer to God, but he also associated with publicans and sinners.  His life was a demonstration of how the spiritual and the physical can be integrated into wholeness.  Both aspects are sacred.  Both are gifts from God who created us as we are.  Our bodies need nourishment for good health.  “Give us this day our daily bread” then becomes a necessary and proportionate part of the person God created us to be.

Notice the first person plural pronoun “Give us…our daily bread.”  We are community, and if one in the community goes hungry,.all are affected.  The plea is not to satisfy an individual’s hunger, but shows our responsibility for our fellow human beings who, oftentimes because of circumstances over which they exercise little control—famine, loss of work, illness, dire poverty—cannot feed themselves or their family.  Jesus taught us to live compassionately and share with others.  In recent years the need for food has risen in places to disastrous levels.  A crust of bread is a feast for many who can find it.  As we sit at our well-laden tables, let us be aware of the gnawing hunger which is a way of life for many people.  If we are to do the will of our Father, we will find a way to share our own daily bread—our bounteous provisions of not only food but money, clothing, time and prayers—with those who stand in dire need of help.  We are invited to go to our Heavenly Father daily and ask for our daily bread, and at the same time think not only of ourselves but of others.