Our daily bread
This fresh set of Daily Devotions is being provided for our LCA/NZ family, friends and visitors to help us to keep our eyes on Jesus as we face unsettling times. They can be used by families and individuals as part of the LCA/NZ’s Church@Home resources to encourage us and build trust in our Heavenly Father during this season of uncertainty and physical isolation.
by Darren Pope
Click here for your printable verse to carry with you today.
Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11)
Jesus teaches and models prayer with his disciples, as they lean into Jesus, listening to learn more about daily life. Jesus’ teaching on prayer includes the request for the gift of daily bread. What is the bread? In this context and in our lives bread represents: the necessities of life, God’s word, God’s family, fellowship and salvation. Bread represents the things we all need daily.
Why is it daily? In context, manna bread was a temporary and daily blessing, gifted to nourish and sustain. Matthew reminds us to look at the birds of the air, who do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet our heavenly Father feeds them daily. In relationship, Christ broke bread, shared his broken body as a living sacrifice and offers himself to each of us daily through love and grace.
Being human, our inherent desire is to predict, worry about and try to control what the future holds. Beyond today, do we really need to know what events will unfold? God comes to us, through Christ, in our broken humanity and assures us that he is walking each step with us each day. Christ liberates us to make plans, look to the future with hope and by his plan be grounded in the events of today as we serve, lead and learn in community. Christ gives us each day our daily bread.
Living and true God, thank you for listening deeply into our hearts. Thank you for the blessing of relationship. Thank you for nourishing us. Thank you for being our daily bread. Thank you for today. Amen.
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