The Prayer for Daily Bread

THE PRAYER FOR DAILY BREAD

Lk. 11:1-13

Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Give us each day our daily bread."  In this petition Jesus teaches us to pray for the necessities of life just for this day, not the things we tend to ask God for, a win on the Lottery, a new home or car, a holiday in the sun.  No, Jesus teaches us to pray for the basics in life, the necessities we need to survive, because He knows more than anyone that you can never satisfy greed and selfishness.  The more we have, the more we want.  We are never content.

I love that Aesop’s fable about the dog who had a juicy piece of meat.  He went to his hiding place where he could eat it in peace.  First, he had to cross a stream.  As he was crossing, he looked into the clear water, and there he saw another dog like himself, with a large juicy hunk of meat.  It looked so much larger and juicier than his own.  He opened his jaws to grab at it.  The meat within his jaws fell into the water and was swiftly washed away by the current.  Only then did the dog realise he was looking at his own reflection.  In trying to obtain what he hadn’t got, the lost what he had.  We behave like that dog, never content with what we have.  As a result, we are never happy.  This is precisely why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The moment we realise that this petition is a simple petition for the needs of just today, there are several lessons to be learned.

It tells us that God cares for our bodies.  Jesus showed us that.  He spent so much time curing the sick and satisfying their physical hunger.  Any teaching which belittles and despises the body is wrong.  We can see what God thinks of our human bodies, when we remember that His Son took a body like ours and became man.  Jesus came to bring complete salvation, salvation of body and soul.

This petition teaches us to live one day at a time and not to be anxious for the distant and unknown future.  When Jesus taught His disciples to pray this petition, was He thinking about His ancestors in the wilderness who were hungry and His Father fed them with manna?  They were to gather up only enough for their immediate need that day.  If they gathered too much, or stored it away, it went hard and inedible.  They had to be satisfied with enough for that day.  This petition forbids anxious worry, which is so characteristic of the person who has not learned to trust.

This petition gives God His proper place.  It admits that it is from God that we receive the food necessary to support life.  No human person has ever created a seed, which will grow.  The scientist can analyse a seed into its constituent elements, but no synthetic seed will ever grow, all living things come from God.  Our food is the direct gift of God.

This petition very wisely reminds us of how prayer works.  If a man prayed this prayer and then sat back and waited for bread to fall into his hands, he would certainly starve.  Prayer and work go hand in hand.  When we pray that prayer we must go to work and help to make our prayers come true.  It is true that the living seed comes from God, but it is equally true that it is man’s task to cultivate that seed.

There is a story told of a man who bought a beautiful mansion.  It was in perfect condition, but the large garden was a jungle.  How hard he worked to make it presentable.  He cleared the stones, pulled up the weeds, dug up the brambles, fertilised the ground, until it produced the loveliest flowers and fresh vegetables.  The grass on the lawns was lush and green and the rockery a picture to look at, ablaze with flowers and shrubs.  One evening he was taking his friend around the garden.  His friend said, “Isn’t it wonderful what God can do with a piece of ground like this?”  “Yes,” said the man who had put it all that hard work, “but you should have seen this patch of land when God had it to Himself!”  God’s bounty and man’s toil must combine.  Prayer, like faith, without works is dead.  When we pray this petition, we are recognising that without God we can do nothing, and that without our own effort and cooperation God can do nothing for us.

Notice Jesus did not teach us to say, “Give me my daily bread,” but “Give us our daily bread”.  The problem of the world is not that there is not enough food to go around.  There is enough and to spare.  In America granaries overflow with wheat, and shiploads of wheat are thrown in the sea to steady the price of wheat.  In Brazil they fire locomotives with blocks of surplus coffee.  The problem is not that there is not enough of life’s essentials; it is the distribution of them.  This prayer teaches us never to be selfish.  It is a prayer we can help to answer by giving to others who are less fortunate than we are.  This prayer is not only a prayer that we may receive our daily bread; it is also a prayer that we may share our daily bread with those in need.

Finally, I think this prayer teaches us to pray daily for the Bread of life, the Holy Eucharist.  Indirectly it teaches us to pray for a sufficient number of priests to say daily Masses in our churches, so that we can have Holy Communion every day, for without a priest this is impossible.  What a lot is contained in those few words, “Give us this day our daily bread.” 

Lord Jesus, thank you for teaching us to pray for our daily bread.  It shows how dependant we are on You.

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