Our Daily Bread (Matt 6:11)

"Give us this day our daily bread" - Matt 6:11

This familiar phrase is found in the Lord's Prayer during Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. As with almost everything else Jesus said, it has its origins in the Old Testament.

To better understand Jesus's meaning, we must go back to Exodus 16. At this point, the Israelites have just escaped slavery in Egypt and are beginning their trek through the desert. Only one month after witnessing the power of God split the Red Sea, the Israelites begin to grumble to Moses about their hunger.

God hears their plight and promises to feed them. He declares that He will send down "bread from heaven" on the Israelites. But there is a very important stipulation: the Israelites are only to gather enough bread to last them one day. If they attempt to hoard the bread - demonstrating a distrust in God to provide the next day - then the bread will rapidly grow mold.

Of course, some of the Israelites do just this, and the mold grows just as God had warned.

Today many of are making the same mistake. We are focusing so much on the future that we forget to live in the present.

Our modern society has placed a high premium on the future. We are told to stay hurried and stressed in the present so that we can have peace and "retirement" in the future. Regardless of the potential practical utility of this advice, we can be sure that it did not come from Jesus. Jesus exhorts us to take not a "future perspective" on life but rather an eternal perspective.

And paradoxically, by focusing on eternity, our focus is brought back into the present, which is the only moment we ever truly live in.

Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

By chronically planning our entire lives ahead of time, we are restricting God from being able to take us to new and surprising places. By focusing our attention on today, we are able to give proper respect to the current task God has placed before us.

The more we force ourselves to rely on God, the more God will be able to reveal His power to us. In a world of technology, luxury, and safety nets, this is very difficult to do. But we all could do better to aim at being just a bit more reliant upon God each day.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh."

John 6:51