Give us this day our daily bread.

(Reader beware, you may want to skip this one – it could be hazardous to your wealth)

On the surface this appears to be a safe and reasonable prayer: “Lord give me just what I need today”. Yet, is this really what it means? If what we were asked to pray was “Give ME this day MY daily bread”, we’d be golden. However, that is not what it says…or means. Consider: you pray, “Lord, give us this day our daily bread” and God provides your daily bread and then some. Your neighbour prays, “Lord give us this day our daily bread”, and no bread comes. Has God shown greater favour to you because you are somehow more righteous and desiring than your neighbour? Although I believe we’d say a collective ‘NO’, our actions reveal something quite different. You see, in answering your prayer of “Give us this day…” God has not only answered your prayer, He as equally answered your neighbour’s prayer. But you got the bread and your neighbour did not – so where does the problem lay for my neighbour’s lack? The problem is me! I’m withholding my neighbour’s answer – I’m hording it, banking it, eating it all myself. This came into new perspective for me as a result of two unrelated but closely timed experiences. Firstly, I sat in a class with Dr. Haddon Robinson as he spoke about the Lord’s prayer and unpacked the idea of ‘our daily bread’ and the subsequent implications. Secondly, a few weeks later I spent two weeks traveling throughout Haiti and seeing the effects of lack of bread first hand, in a country less than a two-hour flight away from what is known as the ‘bread basket of the world’. Kind of ironic isn’t it: the prayer, ‘give us this day our daily bread’ and North America known as the ‘bread basket of the World’? I think, few of us would deny, even in this time of economic crisis, that North America has stacks and stacks of horded stuff – in fact, it’s those very stacks of horded stuff that are collapsing on us. A big part of the problem is that while we have prayed the prayer “Give us this day our daily bread” and it would appear that God has answered us, we have not accepted the truth that it is not ‘my’ bread – it is also my neigbour’s bread. It is not North American bread, but it is Haiti’s our neighbour’s bread, it is Africa our neighbour’s bread, it is… you get the picture.
Jesus has an encounter with a rich young man (Luke 18:18) that gives me great concern. You know the account. The wealthy young man comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to have eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the law. The young man responds “All these things I have kept since my youth”. Upon hearing this, Jesus says to him, “You still lack one thing, sell all you have and give it to the poor and then you will have treasure in heaven; then follow me.” When the young man heard this, he became very sad because he was a man of great wealth.
This disturbs me. Quite frankly, I don’t like that story and here is why. We, us, North America, in so many cases are that young wealthy ruler. We want to know the answer to the same question “What must I do to have eternal life”. Jesus says, “Keep the law.” We answer, “I’ve said the sinners prayer; I’ve taught Sunday School; I’ve read my Bible, said my prayers, went to church and tithed regularly. Jesus hearing this says to us “You still lack one thing, sell everything you have and give it to the poor and then you will have treasure in heave;, then follow me.” I hear your self-justifications and sensibilities kickin’ in: “But it’s a different world” – “I’m not that wealthy” – “That’s not really what Jesus was asking,” you say. How do I know that is what you are saying? Because it’s exactly what I’ve been saying to myself for years – the same empty rationalizations. And I become very sad because of my great wealth. When you hear of children who are eating a mixture of flour and mud in order to stretch the meal for the family – I am stinking, piled high and deep, drowning in wealth! I hear you say: “But you don’t understand - I’m not that wealthy - I have responsibilities and bills - I have more bills than money” and I realize that for some this is truly the case. Although this may not be reflective of you – it is for those of us who have created a life system of credit debt and relentless consumerism that forces us to upgrade, buy bigger, and buy…buy…buy! This is for those of us that believe we deserve newer, faster, brighter, bigger, more, better… The new phrase is the “rich poor”. Ah, poor, poor us.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know yet what all of this means to me - to begin to pray this prayer as Jesus instructed “pray this way”. But I do know this, I gotta figure it out and fast – because I’m responsible for a lotta bread that my neighbour is waiting for.
Anyway, I was just thinking

Neil