“Give us, this day, our daily bread.” We pray this all the time, but what does that even mean? What are we asking when we ask to receive “our daily bread?”
As one of this week’s readings tell us, in the desert, the Israelites were sent manna. Each day, they received the manna they needed to survive that particular day. If they tried to stow the manna to prepare for tomorrow, they would find it had spoiled. This daily bread. Bread that God provides, one day at a time. Which ultimately means that we need to trust God—God alone and on a daily basis—to provide that bread.
The message is very clear, when we pause to consider it. The message is that he’ll provide everything we need, and we just need to trust that he’ll come through for us. The message is that we need him, not the other way around. He will provide our bread, our sustenance, our provisions. He will take our full effort and bless it and multiply it.
My question is: How often do we take this for granted? For those of us who have lived with the blessing of great prosperity, we hardly know the meaning of lacking such necessities as basic food. We tend to take for granted all of the rich and wondrous blessings given to us by God. Often it is true that those who have little are far happier and more content with life than those who have much. We who live in prosperity are often guilty of forgetting that it is God who provides for all of our basic needs, and not we ourselves.