Luke 11 v 3. “Give us each day our daily bread.
Life is not easy on this planet and while many have enough and more than enough to eat, there are vast numbers of people who go hungry. Certainly, in the time of Christ getting daily bread for some people was a big thing, and we know this to be true even today.
So we pray and ask God to provide us with all we need to live meaningfully for him in this world.
For some life may be a precarious thing as they seek daily to survive, so we often have to turn to the precious words of Jesus in Matthew 6 vs 25 – 27. But we need to remember that it is daily bread we should pray for. That means our basic needs not our luxuries or “greeds”. And He has promised to provide; be it ever so simple, it will be His provision.
But “daily bread” does not refer only to actual literal bread, but rather to all we need to survive. Some people are caught up in situations which bring great grief or sadness to them and their emotions are drained. They need emotional strength to survive. God grants that too. We only have to remember the story of Job as an illustration. Others may be in need of psychological strength for it may be that they may suffer from some mental disorder and they struggle to cope. Remember that people like this may be true believers in Jesus and be deeply needy or confused about themselves. Does God abandon such? No! Never. Even to them He gives “daily bread”, that is, the ability to keep hanging on to Jesus in spite of frightful psychological problems.
And so we could go through life and see how people may need more than a crust of bread to survive. They need inner emotional, mental and spiritual strength. And so we pray “give us today our daily bread”.
Jesus taught us to pray in this way. Not merely the mechanical words, but all the fleshed out feelings of agony and need that we may bring before Him. Will He stand by us? He will! Remember his name is Father!