Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses......

Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our tresspasses……..

When reading a sentence be sure you make correct pauses as the punctuation indicates.  A period requires a full stop. As at a stop sign.  A comma either requires an additional one or more items of the same theme, or a change with more than one particular thought. 

With the sem-column after bread we see a pause following this thought, and then the new thought of forgiveness is still part of this prayer to the Father.  It is here that we find a series of proclamations giving praise to our Father, enumerating specific requests after the thanksgiving for his Majesty and eternal Omnipotence.  The two issues go together as part of requests and they join the other requests that bring the ominous Lord’s Prayer to the most perfect words of giving our Father praise and thankfulness and then as a direction from Jesus ask and it will be given you.  (Mt 7: 7 - 8).

A question relating to the “give us today our daily bread” is when good Christian believers are hungry or need protection and can’t seem to get God’s attention, where do they now go to find satisfaction for their prayers?   There may be outside factions that are to blame for many of the disappointments that seem to be responsible for our loss or lack of fulfilling our needs.  When this occurs we now look to another prayer asking God to change what has happened.  

 Our search for understanding why after all the prayers and there is no answer, we must fall back on the gift of free-will that God gives to all his children.  When disaster hits created by people with evil desires, it is not that God allows this without some punishment.  However, we know that God waits on these people turning back to him for these sinners to repent and seek forgiveness.

The premise of free-will is for each person to seek eternal life with the Holy Trinity on their own initiative.  God will not coerce anyone to choose this life.  That is the very reason we have this wonderful gift of free-will.  

Any time we might be the problem for someone else’s loss, it just might be our own free-will that has created another’s difficulty and they too will ask God for an answer.  Free-will is the greatest gift God gives us in order to seek his kingdom freely.  As mentioned above, God will welcome all of those into heaven who have made the choice on our own decision.  “Give us today our daily bread” covers much more than the bread we eat.

Ralph B. Hathaway