Saturday, February 27
“Give us this daily our daily bread.”
Daily bread. What a throw-away line. To me, it’s fathomable that if The Lord’s Prayer were brought to an editor’s desk in modern-day America, this clause would be marked for deletion.
The primary reason I think this line doesn’t register with us is that “bread” is something we all take for granted. Store-bought, pre-packaged bread is something we buy without thinking. Sometimes gross and much-maligned for its empty calories and carbohydrates, it shows up in everyone’s pre-blizzard shopping cart, and often times, in the garbage on trash pickup morning. It serves as a house for delicious meats and vegetables, but rarely do we smack our lips thinking about that plastic bag and metal twist-tie. If we catch it while it’s stale, but before it’s moldy, Martha tells us, we can grind it up for home-made bread crumbs. That’s the amount of respect most of our breads get.
On the other hand, your luxury breads, those that are homemade, or found in a nice bakery sleeve with the little window on the front can melt your heart with their goodness, yet they end up being one of the most affordable items in the grocery store. And to an even greater extreme, have you ever noticed that some of these most amazing of breads are given out just for showing up to a restaurant? We here have such a variety of “daily bread” available, that some of the finest breads are literally given away as a table decoration until the main course arrives. The economy of flour truly makes no sense.
There’s another, more powerful, reason that I think this line doesn’t sit well with us here in modern America. It’s too real, and we don’t like to think about things that are real. I glide over this line, preferring to settle my mind on forgiving trespasses, because even that activity seems easier to bear than the thought of someone in the world who lacks daily bread. Now, I know that in most interpretations, “daily bread” is a simple metaphor for nourishing food that is neither too rich, nor too mal-nutritious– that sustenance which is “just right” for us to make it another day. But, to think that there are neighbors who lack food of any sort, who would do anything to provide those tossed-away restaurant rolls for their family? Too real.
As it so happens, metaphor or not, I’m a bread/starch/carbohydrate junkie. Nicola commonly tells people that my ideal dinner would be mashed potatoes with French fries, rice, and a few rolls. And she’s not too far off (there’d be pasta too). So, in a funny way, the conceptual loss of “daily bread” hits me pretty hard, harder than say “daily vegetables” or even “daily meat”. When the Atkins diet was popular a few years back, or when I hear of someone who can’t process gluten, I panic a bit, “What about the breads?!”
“Give us…” seems a strange petition to me. I ask God for strength all the time, in fact, when I’m torn in a difficult situation, sometimes the only thing I can think to pray on is “give me strength”, “get me through this”. But “give me bread” seems, in a way, as selfish a request as “God, give me a TV” or “Give me a higher salary.” But, I tend to think that its inclusion in the prayer is more to help us be aware of those for whom something as basic as bread is a hardship.
When Debbie first offered the idea of daily reflections based on the Lord’s Prayer, and I began to consider my contributions, I thought immediately about, instead, daily water. I’ve tracked with a broken heart the political hotbed that is Flint, Michigan right now, and can’t begin to imagine the citizens’ frustration at living with a faucet that functions (you can see the poisoned water flowing from it, even) but which is completely useless. For them, “God, give me water” doesn’t sit poorly in my mind at all.
Additionally, I’m provided a bit more clarity when I see privileged Americans running ironically through forgotten third-world villages in their quest for a million dollars on the reality TV competition The Amazing Race. It’s then that I suddenly understand the bread concept a little more. Perhaps the reason I don’t get this clause is because it’s one I’ve never struggled with. I drink my water without thinking. I eat too much bread. God doesn’t want me to forego them in an effort to better understand my neighbors’ plight. But I know that I am called to take them more appreciatively.
God of the flowing stream, God of the bounteous harvest, help us to pay witness to those on the other side of the fence, that we may understand their suffering, and offer full appreciation for all we have. Amen.
–Rick Seaholm