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“Give us this day our daily bread and …”
Did you ever notice in The Lord’s Prayer that the daily bread part and the forgiving of others is connected? “Give us our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
So how do food and forgiveness get linked together? Well, obviously, they don’t. So the daily bread spoken of here has nothing to do with nutrition. Let’s be honest–you and I don’t need anybody to give us our bread. We can both make it and bake it. The daily bread mentioned in this prayer refers to the circumstances coming our way just through the living of life and our awareness for dealing with them in the moment instead of putting it off to another day.
Can I be so bold as to say that our problem as human beings is that we are emotionally dealing with yesterday’s problems when today’s shipment arrives? So we are constantly dialing in the wrong response. When today shows up sunny, we are still trying to recover from yesterday’s downpour. Therefore we are emotionally diametrically opposed to our own better interests. Yet we are instructed in this society to keep a cap on ourselves and be a grown up because that’s the way to live. Yet if you pile enough days up in a row with no reaction, you start building up a storehouse of resentment that completely incapacitates you from receiving blessing when it actually does arrive. So it’s easy to settle in to a sour disposition just to protect oneself from the horror of past unresolved feelings and the apprehension over what’s around the corner. See what I mean?
Daily bread is for today, not tomorrow. It is what I need to consume, digest and pass out of me before a new day begins. If I don’t, I become emotionally constipated–disgruntled by the whole process of devouring anything else.
- Most of us aren’t ready for our miracle because we’re still trying to recover from the horror of hearing about our disease.
- Most of us are incapable of embracing a new possibility because we are lamenting the last lost horizon.
- Most of us cannot move into fresh relationships with companions because we are still stinging from the disappointment of our previous encounter.
Daily bread is linked to forgiving others because if we do not clean our slate every twenty-four-hour period, we are not energized to receive new data. This is why it is important to be emotionally forthcoming. It’s an attribute we have tried to assign to women over men or even to one race over another. That is error.
In studying the life of Jesus, the first thing you will notice is that he lives in the moment. He may be on his way to heal a twelve-year-old girl, but when a woman touches the hem of his garment, he stops and celebrates with her because that is what the moment demands emotionally. When he is getting ready to heal a man with a withered hand, he pauses before completing the process to challenge those in the room who were objecting to the procedure because they deemed that it was performed on the wrong day.
“Give us this day our daily bread” is making sure we are ready for this portion of emotional blessing and strain that is coming our way because we have cleaned out the fear, apprehension and misgivings of the previous day. If you don’t do this, you start piling up–you begin to respond on Tuesday to what you should have said on Monday. You will find yourself reacting from last Wednesday’s pent-up anger over a statement made to you on this Wednesday in love that you misinterpret.
Emotional health is realizing that life happens in twenty-four-hour units. You cannot be an emotionally healthy person and misunderstand this concept.
“Give us this day our daily bread”…AND understand that as we forgive others we find forgiveness, which sets in motion a landing space for tomorrow to arrive.
So what happens if we do decide to ignore this concept and we start storing up our daily bread, remembering the events of previous days as we enter the next one? Well, that unfortunate procedure is detailed in another story in the Bible, which ends up with, would you believe it?
Stinky worms.
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