"Give us today our daily bread." – Matthew 6:11
Anxieties related to food, drink, shelter, and clothing might be some of the most common human emotional experiences in the history of mankind. It also doesn’t seem that human progress in the modern age has much changed the cold, hard facts on the ground–scarcity rules, and it’s better to be enslaved to something and eat, than live free and die of starvation. It’s the wisdom of this world, and the reason we struggle to get back to where we came from. And hasn’t this always been the case? As ethereal as they might appear, wisdom and its counterfeits have always been worked out in the flesh-and-bone world of food and fig leaf. Israel, like Adam, struggled to resist the serpentine twisting of the divine word: Did God really say that there would always be enough? What if tomorrow….
Only a few chapters previously in Matthew, Jesus is faced with the inversion of Israel’s test–he is tempted to do the miracle himself and prove that he is the son of God by miraculously creating bread in the wilderness (Matt. 4). His response was about as backwards as his command to not worry about food, drink, or clothing. Apparently, in Jesus’ opinion, humans don’t live by taking the food they think they need, but rather by listening to the word of YHWH. YHWH led Israel into the desert to teach them a garden lesson, and, like the original couple, it wasn’t exactly a passing grade. Jesus aced the same test, and then put our dependence on daily provision and divine direction at the heart of the daily prayer he trained his disciples to pray. The request acknowledges both our constant lack and the surpassing generosity of our Heavenly Father who delights to provide us with everything when we make Him our One Thing. Let’s do just that.
Reflection:
To hear the Lord’s Prayer put to song by various artists, check out the BibleProject page, “Sing The Prayer”
- How can you trust God to provide for your needs each day?
- Where in your life do you need to depend on God’s provision rather than your own efforts?
- How does the story of the manna in the wilderness and Kristi’s experience inspire you to trust in God’s faithfulness?
- Art: The Gathering of the Manna by James Tissot – https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/26365-the-gathering-of-the-manna, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8849141
- Songs:
- “Our Father” – Bethel Music;
- “The Lord’s Prayer” – Benjamin William Hastings & Hillsong Worship