Our Daily Bread

Matthew 6:11 – Give us today our daily bread. (NIV)

As a homemaker, I prepare three meals a day for my family, each one designed with the special needs of the day in mind. For breakfast, food is needed to wake them up and get them energized and going. For lunch, I serve a maintenance meal, with foods designed to keep the body going as it continues work. By dinnertime, the need for high energy is past, and the family needs to wind down. The pace has slowed, and a more leisurely meal is prepared, an enjoyable one, I hope, that will take care of the body's needs for the next twelve hours.

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray for daily bread. Do we spend as much effort on our daily spiritual bread as on our daily physical bread? God has the proper nutrients for our spiritual food, but we sometimes fail to ask for it daily. We feed our body three times a day. Do we feed our spirit as often?

When God sent manna to the Israelites, they were permitted just enough for each day. If they tried to collect more, it rotted. Today's battles cannot be fought on yesterday's food. Just as I would not allow my family to depend on yesterday's food to do today's work, we shouldn't expect to get through today on the spiritual nourishment of yesterday.

We need to slow down, turn the cell phone off, turn our attention to our Creator, and ask Him to give us for today and today only — our daily bread.

Prayer: Father, most of us eat far more than our physical bodies need, yet we do not take our spiritual diet seriously. Help us to see that partaking of the correct spiritual diet will cure many of our daily ills. Lord, give us today our daily bread. Amen.

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