Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

This blog today was inspired after a Bible trivia game Tuesday night. There are over eighty groups to get involved with in the community where I live. It's great If you’re a social butterfly because there are plenty of opportunities to hobnob and interact with others. I’ve picked and chosen those I most enjoy of which my favorites are the Bible studies and fellowship groups. At the Stonebriar and Friends group meeting on Tuesday night, besides a yummy pot luck meal, we played Bible Trivia. I’ll admit. I’m a pretty good Bible tool, but not the sharpest tool in the Bible shed. Thankfully, another gal at our table brought us home to victory with her quick thinking. We were tied with another table but because we finished our questions first, we won the prizes of these “Our Daily Bread” Promise Boxes.

Immediately, I had to share this story with my fellow winners. “This little Promise Box reminds me of one of my mother-in-law’s precious treasures. She and dad received their Promises Loaf of Bread box as a wedding gift 73-years ago. Today, the little cards are frayed on the edges and many words are faded, but if you were visiting her for any length of time, you’d likely be asked to pull a card that has a Bible verse on it and asked to read it and own the words because “those are God’s words for you”.

Before Mom moved to my sis-in-law’s home, in any given day, you could walk into her home and you'd find her at her kitchen table -- reading her Bible, praying or visiting on the phone with a soul who needed her words of encouragement. And, if you were really on cue, you’d draw one of those Bible verses. The words on those cards were just words unless you knew the Author of those verses. For mom and dad, they knew the Author and Finisher of their faith very well and those words proved true in the many years of their lives together. No doubt – if we’d draw upon those scriptures, they would point us in the way we should go, too! It’s time to increase our daily intake of God’s Word. It will be like nourishment and medicine to our bodies, souls and spirits – and if ever we needed to be operating at full capacity, our fuel topped off for the day’s long haul, with our hearts renewed and filled with the Word of God – it’s today.

"Give us this day our daily bread...." are words from the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:11. Obviously, Jesus wasn’t telling His disciples to pray only for bread – in the loaf-of-bread sense. He was teaching us to come to God in humble dependence, asking Him to provide what we need and to sustain us from day to day. As I read my scripture readings yesterday morning, this scripture popped out at me from John 6:35: "Then Jesus declared, 'I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'” He is the Bread of Life so we pray: "Give us YOU, Lord, as our daily life-giving (and I love that He promised “abundant life”) bread. He is our sustenance Who daily manifests His Word to and in us.