Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:11
All species have needs and God is the Supply.
To ask Him for our daily bread is to recognize that all good things come from God and while I may toil and strive, He is ultimately my provider.
Our needs are symbolized beautifully by bread, basic food that isn’t fancy but satisfies hunger and provides fuel for the body. We may desire an abundance of good things: health, relief from stress, a new job, the healing of a relationship, or a million other things. How can we list every one of our heart’s desires? Do we even know our truest needs? Or, how can we anticipate what the day may hold? We may need something today that we wouldn’t think to ask for.
But God knows. This simple request encapsulates everything with the plea that He knows our truest needs, and that is what we really want.
Curiously, in the original language, there is a beautiful spiritual dimension to this request as well as physical. The plea is, literally, for our super-essential bread, the bread that supersedes all others, our most critical supply. But this use of the noun is not a place or thing, it is a person – the Lord Jesus Himself.
The wonder of the gospel is that Jesus is not just our supplier, He IS our supply. He doesn’t just provide our daily bread, He IS our daily bread.
Later in Matthew six, Jesus speaks of Himself as the “Bread of Life that has come from heaven and given life to the world.” And He assures us that “we may eat of it and not die,” but, “live forever.”
When we ask God for our daily bread we are asking for a day of communion with Christ, nourished by His Word and satisfied by the fullness of His presence.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Sincerely,
Ed
