Daily Bread: Dependence, Provision, and Contentment

When Christ taught His disciples to pray "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11), He established five cardinal truths about provision and trust.

First, even bodily wants must be subordinated to religious purposes—we do not live by bread alone, but by every word proceeding from Adonai. Second, our dependence upon God for supplying bodily needs ought to be openly recognized and confessed. Third, sufficiency, not superabundance, is what we should solicit; we ask for daily bread, not heaps of treasures to pamper ourselves. Fourth, unnecessary anxiety about the future is condemned; we ask for this day, not for stores to last years. Fifth, all selfish grasping and unfair living upon others must be avoided.

The prayer teaches both the poor and the rich: the poor find their special interest here; the rich discover their need. Bread becomes, by natural figure, the necessaries of life—not luxuries. When we pray this petition, we employ the language of personal need, conscious dependence, quiet contentment, childlike trust, and fraternal sympathy.

Isaac Barrow, D.D., observed that we must esteem God's providence our surest estate, God's bounty our best treasure, and God's Fatherly care our most certain and comfortable support. Daily bread means constant dispensation of what is needful—Adonai's perpetual care, not our perpetual anxiety.