When I think of this phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, I think of children asking for food. We get hungry so we need to eat. Like children look to Mom or Dad to feed them, we look to our father in heaven to provide food for us. But this is only one of the ways God provides for us. In addition to our physical bodies, our souls need nourished too. Jesus knows that if our souls don’t get fed regularly they will die just like a body will eventually quit working and waste away if not fed with the proper food.
Our souls don’t need meat or vegetables to survive. They need a very different kind of food. Nutrients like grace, love, healing, salvation, and redemption is what gives life to our hungry souls. In John 6, Jesus calls himself the Bread of Life. In verses 33 and 35, he says, “The bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
In this prayer, when we ask God to please give us this day our daily bread, we’re really asking God to sustain both our bodies and our spirits. When we pray and spend time with Jesus each day, we will have all we need to stay satisfied and to sustain our lives. There is one more way Jesus instructs us to pray by giving us this phrase about daily bread. This is through intercession, which means praying for others. Once we experience God’s care for us, we should ask God to also care for the hungry. These people may be physically hungry because they live in places without enough food. They might also be spiritually hungry because the gospel still needs to reach them. Our prayers should be for God to satisfy them with all the benefits of the kingdom of heaven.
As taught in the beatitudes from Matthew chapter 5, the kingdom brings comfort, mercy, righteousness, peace, and the promise of seeing God. Another phrase of the Lord’s Prayer asks for God’s kingdom to come to earth. This is what we are praying for when we ask God to care for the spiritually hungry. Sins are forgiven. Disease is healed. Evil is routed. God’s supreme and holy power reigns. In God’s kingdom, the cry for daily bread becomes a proclamation that a banquet feast is taking place around God’s throne and all are welcome.
