Thanksgiving Day most Alabama families will gather around a table boasting a special dish or two for their annual Thanksgiving meal. Before the turkey is cut or the cranberry sauce dipped, heads will bow and hands will be held as families offer thanks to God for His blessings and presence during the past year.
Deuteronomy 8:20 commends this practice when the writer urges Israel to “remember all the ways which the Lord thy God led thee.” Hopefully Christians acknowledge God’s blessings every day but once a year it is as if the nation pauses to remember and give thanks.
In various ways practically every family will echo the words Jesus taught His disciples to pray when He instructed them to ask God to “give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). It does not matter if the table is overflowing with bounty reflecting a prosperous year or the meal has been provided, in part, with food stamps, the plea to God for daily bread is common to all.
Recognizing that physical life requires the shared necessity of food has a way of softening differences between rich and poor, of lessening the prejudices between races and cultures. All humanity must have daily bread. Without it one dies.
Giving thanks to God for that daily bread acknowledges the Lord’s role in our personal history. While some may point to their own efforts in earning their bread, it is God who empowered and equipped them to do the various tasks that resulted in bread.
Others may point to the laws of nature that produces the miracle of food growing from seeds but no one should ever lose site of the God who is nature’s lawmaker (Ps. 65:9–13).
Jesus was concerned about the physical needs of people including their need for food. Matthew 14:13–21 tells the story of the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus saw the multitudes that followed Him to the remote side of the Sea of Galilee, He had “compassion” on them. One of the things He did was order the disciples to feed them. The meagerness of two fish and five pieces of bread, with the blessing of the Lord, was more than enough to feed them all.
We know when we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread,” we are praying for something that God desires.
Each word of the Model Prayer has special meaning.
“Give” illustrates dependence on God. One does not ask God to lend us bread or to sell it for humanity cannot bargain with God. The word is an imperative as if one is begging God to please give us bread.
“Us” is plural, not singular. One prays for bread for all, not just for me. The word “us” reminds of God’s command to live with charity and compassion toward the poor and needy. In Alabama almost one in five live in poverty (19 percent) and almost that number live with hunger (18.2 percent), according to the most recent statistics.
For the last year of record an average 920,365 Alabamians received SNAP benefits each month (formerly called food stamps). When the word “us” is prayed, one prays for their daily bread as well as one’s own.
“This day” emphasizes dependence on God. Scholars have argued for hundreds of years over the correct translation of the Greek word epiousion because it is used only here. Some say it is bread for today. Others believe it is bread for tomorrow. All agree that Jesus and the disciples lived in a hand-to-mouth culture and the direction of the word is for one to depend on God like the Israelites in the wilderness did. This does not rule out storing up bread for the future but one’s trust is always in the God who provides and not in one’s self.
Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1–4) differs from Matthew’s at this point. Luke’s version reads “each day.” Luke’s prayer is for today’s bread today and tomorrow’s bread tomorrow. Still, like Matthew, the primary teaching is continual dependence of God.
“Our” points to honesty and industry by the recipient. One’s bread is to be honestly obtained. It is not bread gained by deceit. Proverbs 20:17 warns that “food gained by fraud tastes sweet to a man but he ends up with a mouth full of gravel.”
That verse applies to those who take too much as well as those who do too little. Likewise bread is not to be gained by idleness.
“Bread” recognizes necessities. The prayer is not for cake as tasty as that may be. The prayer is for God to care for the necessities of life — in this case food. Desires and dreams may abound and one may pray for them as well, but the Model Prayer begins at a more basic level. It begins with a prayerful plea for the necessities — for bread.
As prayer for our daily bread is offered around the Thanksgiving table, God is worshipped. His faithfulness represented by the bread spread on the table reminds us of God’s faithfulness. But what about our faithfulness? Is thankfulness for daily bread expressed only at Thanksgiving or other special days or is it a daily experience? Is our labor honest and industrious so the bread we eat is ours? It is as sinful to takes someone else’s bread by some business scheme as it is for someone to abuse community concern.
Is the prayer for “our” daily bread supported by concern for the hungry in the community? Providing bread in the form of Thanksgiving meals is good. Helping shape a society where everyone has opportunity to earn their own Thanksgiving bread is better.
As we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread” this Thanksgiving, may we understand that even our prayer calls us beyond ourselves and to a life that demonstrates God’s concern for the wellbeing of all His created children.
Add the blessings of the Lord and it is no telling what miracle the world might see.
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