Week 1, day 3: What daily bread do we need?

“Give us today our daily bread.” (NIV)

“Give us today the food we need.” (Good News)

Bern Leckie writes:

This one sounded straightforward but was complicated by Ocado.

I know this isn’t everyone these days but, I confess, we are a “big shop” family. Sorry about that. As you look for somewhere quick to pay for your handful of necessities, we are the people you might get stuck behind with our two trolleys, piled with family meal ingredients, random treats and bulk buy bargains to keep for ages, just in case, and a small boy joyously hopping among the lot.

Or rather, that was the pre-pandemic routine. Now it’s fewer people picking up the same stuff (or more, because “just in case” covers more dreadful possibilities now) or, if we feel it’s justified once in a while, booking a precious delivery slot and stocking up on luxuries we can only get from the posh van service, like we did on Valentines Day.

To be clear, we are amazingly grateful for the ability to do this. But when there is more than a week’s worth of everything at home, it can feel guilt-inducingly weird to me to pray for daily bread.

So, this is where the prayer took me. What are the down sides of stocking up and feeling comfortable? I was briefly reminded of the foolish man who piled up his stuff to retire but died in a poverty of love towards anyone else. I don’t think that’s us. I really don’t want it to be!

But even if that’s not who we are, I think there is a danger that without a daily reliance on God, knowing that we really need continual supplies from him to survive, our comfortable insulation can remove our sensitivity to what he keeps giving us, how he keeps loving us, and how he might be guiding us. We might even fool ourselves that we are doing fine providing for ourselves.

Jesus talked about bread, and provided it, but also showed that we need more to survive. We discussed this and realised that Jesus wasn’t guiding his followers into holy poverty but into an everyday reliance on God for all we need, including his life-bringing word. Jesus lived on that in the desert, and we can too.

The practical conclusion? We need to keep praying this every day. Jesus gives us this pray to keep us coming back, not to stock up on holiness for a week or more. And we want to grow in love and generosity, because “our stuff” isn’t really our stuff, it’s what God has trusted us to look after for our neighbours as well as ourselves. (Ask if you need anything!)