When was the Last Time You Prayed for Daily Bread?
Back to the million-dollar question—what do I need? I need food. I need air. I need water. But I also need clothes. I need a place to live. I need income. I need transportation. So what do I really need? And, when does need move over into the much more exciting world of want. I need food, but I want pizza. I need water, but I want it to be from the Rockies, or at least from an Arkansas spring. I need clothes, but I want Levi’s and Ariat boots. On and on it goes. That’s why we have such a difficult time defining enough. In the ever-graying world between wants and needs, finding enough can prove to be very elusive.
Enter Jesus. The man we worship as King of Kings and Lord of Lords never struggled with the concept of enough. The God who left heaven to live as slave, the King of the universe who had no earthly place to lay his head, the creator of all things who died with absolutely nothing, never once struggled to figure out what enough meant. And he didn’t hesitate to make it clear to his disciples.
When his disciples asked him to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them the brief yet profound model of the Lord’s Prayer. In it, he included a line about seeking God’s provision. I’m sure you can quote it: Give us this day our daily bread, (Matthew 6:11). In one sweeping statement, Jesus presented his followers with a clear picture of what he considered to be enough. Jesus’ daily bread reference no doubt harkens back to the account of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, where God gave them daily provision of manna and quail for forty years.
In Jesus’ mind, that’s all God promises. He promises to give us what we need today. He doesn’t promise to provide for tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. He doesn’t promise to provide in advance for our retirement. All he offers is today. According to God, today is enough. And you know what’s really interesting? If we lived on what Jesus called enough, if we lived with just enough to meet our immediate needs, most of us would think we were poor. But we wouldn’t be. We’d simply have enough.
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