Two pitfalls of prayer
I think there are two common pitfalls in prayer: (1) To turn prayer into a shopping list of requests. (2) To assume God is not interested in seemingly trivial things like “our daily bread.” The simple prayer “Give us today our daily bread” avoids both these pitfalls.
First, this plea comes halfway through the Lord’s Prayer. It comes after the address “Our Father” and after the three “Your” pleas — “Your name be holy, your kingdom come, your will be done.” Yet it is the first of the “us” pleas — “Give us, forgive us, lead us” — indicating its importance. Our earthly needs are important, for we can’t live without bread. Yet Jesus says “Give us our bread” not “Give us our lamb roast and potatoes.” Here we pray for the necessities of life. God gives good gifts that we need, such as: ‘food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, etc’ (Small Catechism).
Second, we remember the Lord’s Prayer begins with “Our Father” — God is compassionate, good, and very near to us. He is interested in seemingly trivial and mundane things like “our daily bread.” Our God is a father who sits and listens as his children tell them about every minute detail of their day. Parents: have you ever experienced this?! Our God listens patiently, he bends low, so low that ‘he made himself nothing’ (Philippians 2:7), coming to earth as a human in the person of Jesus to die on a cross for you.
‘A father who would not listen to everything his child says would not be a father. God does not want only to be “praised”; nor does he want us simply to go on saying, “Thy will be done” and all the while, deep down under our own words, torment ourselves because we have our own will and our own cares and troubles and are only suppressing them out of a kind of religious politeness which we associate with piety. Let us not fool ourselves: the Father knows what we are thinking. And so we can let out even our most secret desires. We really do not need to pretend we are anything but what we are.’ — Helmut Thielicke[1]
There’s an old saying: “In prayer we should reach for the hand of God, not the pennies in his hand.” There’s an element of truth in this, but I think God wants both. He wants us to take his hand, but only after we’ve received the pennies. The same misunderstanding can occur if we spiritualize “bread” too quickly. If we see bread as God’s Word alone, we miss the fact that God is concerned with bodily and material wellbeing. God is concerned with our total being: body and soul. Some of the crowd of 5,000 fed by Jesus get the balance wrong, seeking Jesus only because they ‘ate and had their fill’ (John 6:25–35). God wants us to trust him for both!
Jesus invites us to pray for bread this day
The average Australian eats three slices of bread per day, one loaf per week, or 50 loaves per year — that’s a lot of bread! Jesus doesn’t invite us to calculate how much bread we’ll need for the whole year. Rather, he invites us to ask for our daily rations. We are urged to take it one day at a time. In this prayer Jesus invites you to imagine yourself as an Israelite in the desert, daily relying on God for provision (Exodus 16). Like the Israelite people in the desert, this prayer is an invitation to daily trust God.
‘To ask for daily manna, daily bread, is to trust the God of exodus, the God who is leading us to the good land, but the God who sends us through the desert to prepare us.’ — Nijay Gupta[2]
Do you spend too much time thinking and worrying about the future, and then miss the wonderful gifts God gives you in the present — today, this day? I’m often guilty of this. In this prayer Jesus bids you to wake up to what he’s doing in your life today and this day. Though you may be in the desert, Jesus invites you to trust the God of exodus as he leads you. Jesus says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34). As Martin Luther eloquently says, ‘We pray in this petition that God may make us aware of his gifts and enable us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving’ (Small Catechism). What gifts have you already received this morning? Life and breath to sing. Mouths to confess our faith. Ears to hear God’s word of forgiveness. Tongues to taste bread and wine that is Jesus’ body and blood. Prayer is a time to slow down and be attentive to how God is working in your life.
(See Creative response on the ‘Growing Faith at Home’ sheet).
Give us
This prayer is not just for you (singular), but for “us” (plural). Our neighbours are included in the “us.” Who is our neighbour? Only those in our family? Congregation? Local region? Only those in our country? “Us” is very inclusive!
We often pray for our daily bread with a sense of thankfulness, but perhaps also with some guilt. “Give us our daily bread” can stick in our throat — it’s dangerous because we might choke! This prayer is designed to make us uncomfortable. We sit in that uneasy space asking, “How can we be content when we have so much and others don’t have enough?!” This prayer opens our eyes to thank our heavenly Father for all his gifts. But then moves us to ask God to give his daily bread to the world. “Thank you very much” is followed by “Please show us what to do, please help us to bring your bread to the world!” Prayer is not merely words, but we pray through word and deed. This prayer invites socio-economic action — it’s a prayer for social justice to come to the world through us. How might God give daily bread through you to a neighbour in need?
(See Service on the ‘Growing Faith at Home’ sheet).
[1] Helmut Thielicke, 1965, “The prayer that spans the world: Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer,” chapter 6.
[2] https://www.missioalliance.org/lords-prayer-missional-reading-give-us-daily-bread/
