It’s been a tough holiday season for me so far. Well, that’s not really true. I’m fine, but there are a few friends of mine who are going through some emotional turmoil from a wide range of events including losses of jobs and divorces. One friend of mine didn’t get a Christmas tree this year as she and her husband needed money for groceries.
It’s always easier to read about things like that happening to other people in the newspaper or hear it on the television. There’s an emotional and physical detachment that naturally occurs. However, when you’re faced with it in person, that’s another story entirely. It doesn’t leave you as easily nor does it allow you to simply forget it as “another news item.”
At times like these, when people are faced with tough situations with no clear answers or even a clear sense of when the hard times will end, what can you say, if at all? It’s at times like these that my mind goes to one of the lines that Jesus used in his prayer that he taught the disciples in Luke 11: “Give us each day our daily bread.” This phrase is clearly meant to remind us of the Israelites’ experience in walking through the desert wilderness in Exodus. In Exodus 16, the Lord provided for the Israelites by sending down a bread-like meal called manna every morning and instructs the camp to pick up only enough manna just for that day. The only exception was to be the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to gather enough for two days.
This went on for 40 years. They couldn’t hoard manna and put it in a safe place because then it would rot. They couldn’t depend on themselves to get enough food outside of God because they were in the middle of the desert. For forty years, the Israelites had to literally depend on God’s faithfulness daily for their well-being, for their life. What a terrifying and exhilarating experience that must have been!
We’re not people that easily trust others with things that are important to us because we know the imperfection of humanity. People usually forget or drop the ball often. Imagine trusting your life to someone else every single day for forty years, trusting that they will never forget you or never be a single minute late. It’s a pretty daunting thing to ask for someone, but not God. God was faithful to the Israelites for forty years. He did not forget a single day.
That is what Jesus wanted us to remind ourselves when we pray “Give us each day our daily bread.” Trusting God is not an one-time deal. It is a constant and never-ending daily process in which God wants to show that He is faithful. The world will never be faithful to us. The world will forget us, drop us, leave us, break us, starve us, and abandon us. Jobs will disappear, money will never be enough, health will decrease, and people will disappoint.
Not the Lord. Before we were born, each and every one of us, God knew what He needed to provide us. For 40 years, he gave manna to the wandering Israelites, freed from slavery from Egypt. For us, he gave us Jesus Christ, who was born in a little manger in a tiny town called Bethlehem. This miracle of life would go on to die freeing us from our slavery to our sins so that we might not die wandering in the middle of the earthly wilderness but instead have eternal life.
Give us each our daily bread, indeed.
– Matt
Christmasdaily breadeternal lifeExodusfaithfulGodholidayLuke 11trust
Give Us Each Day Our Daily Bread
December 16, 2010
Calvary
Comments Off on Give Us Each Day Our Daily Bread
Matt
It’s been a tough holiday season for me so far. Well, that’s not really true. I’m fine, but there are a few friends of mine who are going through some emotional turmoil from a wide range of events including losses of jobs and divorces. One friend of mine didn’t get a Christmas tree this year as she and her husband needed money for groceries.
It’s always easier to read about things like that happening to other people in the newspaper or hear it on the television. There’s an emotional and physical detachment that naturally occurs. However, when you’re faced with it in person, that’s another story entirely. It doesn’t leave you as easily nor does it allow you to simply forget it as “another news item.”
At times like these, when people are faced with tough situations with no clear answers or even a clear sense of when the hard times will end, what can you say, if at all? It’s at times like these that my mind goes to one of the lines that Jesus used in his prayer that he taught the disciples in Luke 11: “Give us each day our daily bread.” This phrase is clearly meant to remind us of the Israelites’ experience in walking through the desert wilderness in Exodus. In Exodus 16, the Lord provided for the Israelites by sending down a bread-like meal called manna every morning and instructs the camp to pick up only enough manna just for that day. The only exception was to be the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to gather enough for two days.
This went on for 40 years. They couldn’t hoard manna and put it in a safe place because then it would rot. They couldn’t depend on themselves to get enough food outside of God because they were in the middle of the desert. For forty years, the Israelites had to literally depend on God’s faithfulness daily for their well-being, for their life. What a terrifying and exhilarating experience that must have been!
We’re not people that easily trust others with things that are important to us because we know the imperfection of humanity. People usually forget or drop the ball often. Imagine trusting your life to someone else every single day for forty years, trusting that they will never forget you or never be a single minute late. It’s a pretty daunting thing to ask for someone, but not God. God was faithful to the Israelites for forty years. He did not forget a single day.
That is what Jesus wanted us to remind ourselves when we pray “Give us each day our daily bread.” Trusting God is not an one-time deal. It is a constant and never-ending daily process in which God wants to show that He is faithful. The world will never be faithful to us. The world will forget us, drop us, leave us, break us, starve us, and abandon us. Jobs will disappear, money will never be enough, health will decrease, and people will disappoint.
Not the Lord. Before we were born, each and every one of us, God knew what He needed to provide us. For 40 years, he gave manna to the wandering Israelites, freed from slavery from Egypt. For us, he gave us Jesus Christ, who was born in a little manger in a tiny town called Bethlehem. This miracle of life would go on to die freeing us from our slavery to our sins so that we might not die wandering in the middle of the earthly wilderness but instead have eternal life.
Give us each our daily bread, indeed.
– Matt
Share this:
Christmasdaily breadeternal lifeExodusfaithfulGodholidayLuke 11trust