Our Daily Bread

Matthew 6: 9-13: “This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us today our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”  (NIV)

I really don’t think it’s a coincidence that a few weeks ago I was woken up at 2:20 a.m. with the above verses running through my head.  I felt compelled to get up and write about “Our Daily Bread,” reminding myself that God only wants us to focus on the issues for today, not borrowing from tomorrow and not rehashing those from yesterday.  It also wasn’t a coincidence that when I got up to write down my thoughts on the computer, our wireless router appeared broken.  My connection to the internet world was temporarily severed.

Usually after a discovery like that, I would be in a tailspin, especially in the middle of the night.  I would be upset about adding yet another chore to my already packed Monday.  Stopping at the store to grab a new router and then figuring out how to hook it up, while work backed up was not something I wanted (or needed) to add to my list of things to do that day.

You want to know the great part?  God prepared me ahead of time.  It wasn’t an accident that God compelled me to get up at 2:20 a.m. (I’m usually not that early of a riser) to write about only concentrating on “today’s problems,” that day.  I used to worry…a lot.  I’m working on worrying a lot less.  God wants our faith, not our fear.  Actually, a better way to say it, God wants us to give Him our fear and He will replace it with peace.  He wants us to willingly come to Him in faith, no matter how small, and He will help us grow it.

In my opinion, Our Daily Bread, as referred to in the Lord’s Prayer above, talks about how God will supply for our physical needs what we need today.  Tomorrow, He will supply what we need for that day, and so on.  I also think it means that God will supply for our emotional needs as well.  You see, God is a God who loves every part of us.  He loves our spiritual relationship with Him, our emotions, and our physical bodies – everything that uniquely makes us who we are.  After all, He created us to be multidimensional.  He wants intimate communication with us.  He doesn’t just want us to talk at Him, He wants us to talk with Him and also to listen for His answer.

So, when it refers to our daily bread, I get comfort in knowing that He cares just as much about my physical body as He does for my emotional wellbeing and spiritual health.  It sure made dealing with getting a new router that day (as well as unknown at that time, the six hour wait for a repairman to come and rewire our entire house as the router signaled a much bigger problem), a little easier to swallow…even at 2:20 a.m.  So, on that day a few weeks ago, I went and had that intimate conversation with God before I headed back to bed for a few hours.  After all, Best Buy didn’t open for another six plus hours or so.

Today, on Thanksgiving, the annual day of excess, let’s pause for a minute and truly be thankful for all that God has already given to us (health, family, friends, finances) as well as all that He will continue to supply, exactly when we need it.  Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!