The Making of Your Daily Bread

" Q. What is the fourth petition? A. Give us today our daily bread. That is: Provide us with all our bodily needs so that we may acknowledge that you are the only fountain of all good, and that our care and labour, and also your gifts, cannot do us any good without your blessing. Grant, therefore, that we may withdraw our trust from all creatures and place it only in you." Heidelberg Catechism, question 125

Have you ever had to answer your kid’s question at the dinner table,“why do we thank God for the food when Mommy made it?” It’s a good question.

Do we really need to pray, “Father in Heaven, give us today our daily bread,” when we can simply drive to the Price Chopper, Hannaford’s or the CoOp to get it ourselves?

So why then should we leave this part in when we say the Lord’s prayer. It certainly doesn’t seem to fit. I mean, we just acknowledged these great, big, world-shattering truths that God wants us to address Him as our “Father in Heaven”, that He has a kingdom that is better than the brokenness of this world, that we long for that kingdom to come down and break through today and that we’re going to bend our lives around that desire. And now, we’re going to pray about “daily bread”? It just doesn’t seem to fit.

Well, there’s a reason Jesus included this when he gave us this model prayer and there are, it seems, two pretty powerful challenges for you and me today folded into the dough of this simple, little line.

Sesame Street magic

I enjoy watching video clips that show how a thing was made. The first one I remember watching was a segment on “Sesame Street” about how Crayola crayons were made. The segment opens with two little girls coloring butterflies when one of them holds a crayon up to her eye, pondering its existence and trying to see through it to its beginning. Then, in typical 90’s era Sesame Street wonder, the video fades into scenes from the crayon factory. You watch as a liquid is made, poured, scraped, formed, wrapped, counted, sorted, packaged and finally sent out. The video then fades back to the little girl who, now satisfied having peered through time and space to see this thing’s beginning, smiles as she sets the crayon back in its box and goes about her day.

Now, this prayer for daily bread is really about all the things we need to live day to day. The first challenge folded into the dough of this line is that we need to see the grace of God as the source of all good things. It’s about seeing through life’s necessities to the source of their origin. When we ask our Father in Heaven to “give us” what we need for today, it isn’t just pious rhetoric. Our prayer is an affirmation that all good things come ultimately from His hand and that we are dependent on Him to provide them.

That’s a bit more challenging for you and me to see today. We are so far removed from the production of the things we need; we can’t see what it takes to put bread on the table. But if we were to take that Sesame Street magic and look through that loaf of bread sitting on our table here’s what we’d see.

First we’d see that someone had the skills and the health to work to be able to pay for that bread. We’d see that there was in fact a job that needed doing and an employer willing and able to pay in order to get that job done. Should any one of those things be taken for granted? Where did those talents come from? And the physical health that enabled the worker to do that work? The Christian looks at that bread and sees the grace of God in the ability to work and provide the money to give in exchange for that bread.

Then we look further and we start to wonder, how did that bread get on that shelf at the supermarket in the first place? This is a question that farmers and economics professors could answer in more detail than we can.

But let’s try anyway.

Trace it back first from the sale point to the truck drivers to the distribution center to the bakery to the machinery and the workers who needed to show up to do their work on the day this bread was made. Now go further to the farm that produced the ingredients for that bread then to the bank who worked with the farmer to build a business that would provide for his family and for others. Now we’re starting to get a picture of just how many links there are in this daily bread chain.

If any link in that chain fails, if any one of those components in that system breaks down, the whole system starts collapsing. We are so very helpless, so very dependent on so very many things happening in sync in order for the simplest loaf of bread to get on our table. How much more dependent are we then for all things like clothing, shelter and any other of life’s necessities?

The scope of this line is much bigger than the tiny space it occupies in this prayer. When we pray, “Father, give us...” we need to see the any number of things that could happen to prevent that bread from getting on our table.

Let’s never forget the feeling of walking into the grocery store early in the pandemic and seeing empty shelves.

Let’s not forget the 690 million people who go to bed hungry every night because of empty shelves.

Our wealth can blind us to the grace of God in our every day lives. Let’s not let that happen to each other. It’s all grace.

Farmers are a special people to me. Up until about 100 years ago, humanity lived much closer to the land than we do now. The world wars and the resulting industrialization changed all that, and I think humanity in the West lost something in that process.

Maybe that’s why farmers feel to me to be an enduring symbol of the relationship between humankind and creation. They get to partner with God and His world first hand to provide food, to see it spring up from the ground or the egg or the womb. They are more aware than most of how delicate the balance is in the natural ecosystem of their farm. They talk about things like soil health, hydration, sunlight, pests and seasons. They put the seeds in the ground and they get to watch first hand the miracle of life emerging. In other words, they get to be on the initiating end of providing “daily bread” for you and me.

But any farmer with any experience or wisdom at all knows that there are a great many things out of his or her control. So even the farmer who is, with her own hands, planting the things that will sustain her existence and that of those in her care, she knows that she cannot make the sun shine, she cannot make the rain fall, she can do her utmost but that does not always promise results.

This prayer says, “Father, we see! We won’t be so proud as to think it comes from our hands for everything we have comes from you. Everything we need comes from you.”

This is the refrain sung out in Psalm 145:15-16.

“The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season (at the proper time). You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

Simplicity

The second challenge folded into the dough of this prayer concerns contentment, or being content with simply having what we need. Others have expressed this thought by describing this kingdom value as “simplicity”.

There are certain places where the culture of the kingdom of God, the way of living in faith and obedience to God, directly conflicts with the culture of the world in which we live.

This is one of those areas.

Again, when we pray for "daily bread" we are praying for all the things we need to live day to day. It's a prayer concerned with the essentials, with our needs - not our greeds.

But this flies in the face of everything you and I have been conditioned to believe as citizens of Western culture.

“The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer

pg. 180pg 194

What is this "other gospel" John Mark Comer speaks of? It is the gospel of Jesus, the gospel of "daily bread" where Jesus teaches us to "not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" (Matthew 6:25)

It's the gospel of "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)

It's the gospel of "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:34)

This is the gospel of daily bread; that our worth is not in what we own, that we do not have to worry about tomorrow, that each and every day I can come to him and ask him for all that I need and he will provide.

Give us the day our daily... Starbucks cookie?

Starbucks bag story

Setting the table every day

These two challenges are set before us every day:

To see the grace of God as the source of all we needTo be content with what we need and to live simply one day at a time

So when you wake up tomorrow morning and you set the coffee or pour the orange juice, when you grab the toast from the toaster, when you set about the duties of your day, remember, today your Father in Heaven will provide all you need. You only need to ask Him.

Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who have trespassed against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever Amen