Bread for Today (Matthew 6:31-35)

Today, the verbs change. The first half of the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that God is a good father who loves us, that God’s kingdom is good, and that God’s is trustworthy. Our requests of God come after, and in the context of, a trusting relationship with God. But now, we get three direct, second person appeals: “please give us,” “please forgive us,” and “please rescue us.” So, when we pray, “Give us today the food we need” are we praying for physical bread or spiritual bread? Jesus, the bread of life, also fed thousands of hungry people with real physical bread and real physical fish. The people who followed Jesus were primarily poor. “Give us the bread we need today” almost certainly included a request for real bread today. Maybe some of us can relate to that kind urgent physical need, but many of us, because of our affluence, our middle class privileges, are able to secure, on our own, the physical things we need to make it through most days. Which is kind of ironic, because for people who act like we’ve got it all under control, we sure do worry a lot about a lot of things.  We encourage you to check out https://www.bread.org to discover how we can partner with the work God is doing to feed those who need bread today.