Pray Like This: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayerናሙና

Our Daily Bread

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a report estimates that around a tenth of the world’s population was undernourished in 2020. That is about 811 million (81.1 crores) people. Praise God that most of us have food on our table, but many people don’t. Many poor people believe that hunger will kill them before COVID-19 does. Every minute eleven people are likely to die due to hunger, which is more than the number of deaths due to COVID-19 each minute. When I look at the condition of world hunger, it makes perfect sense to me that the Lord taught us to pray for our daily bread.

God is concerned about our material needs. It’s interesting that after asking us to pray for God’s name to be hallowed, for His Kingdom to come, and His will to be done, Jesus asks us to pray for something seemingly trivial such as our daily bread. So, some allegorize this passage and teach that Jesus asks us to pray for spiritual food. But there’s no reason to think that Jesus was not asking us to pray for literal bread.

God is concerned about our daily needs. As His children, we can go to Him and ask Him to meet our needs. Here, the daily bread represents our daily necessities. Notice that Jesus asks us to pray for our needs, not feed our greed. Jesus asked us to pray for bread, not cake. We can pray for food, job, health, money, and other material needs.

Let's depend on God for our daily sustenance. The petition for daily bread echoes God’s provision of manna in the wilderness. The gracious God who provided manna to His people in the wilderness can be trusted to meet our daily needs (Exodus 16:4; Deuteronomy 8:2-3), including our daily bread. During the wilderness wanderings, God commanded the Israelites to collect manna that was sufficient for that day (Exodus 16:4). They were told not to hoard it for themselves.

Psalm 104:27-28 reminds us that all animals depend on God for their food. Even all humans depend on God for their daily bread. The Lord’s Prayer acknowledges that God is our provider and sustainer. Let’s depend on Him for all our needs and be a channel of blessing to others.