A short reading and prayers for today
Give us today the food we need.
Matthew 6:11 NLT
Have you ever wondered why we ask God for food on a daily basis? Why not ask him to supply us for a week or even a month? It’s a perfectly sensible question and the answer is clearly that God wants a relationship with us. He wants us to live in continual partnership with him. Every day we need to turn to him to obtain the nourishment that we need. This applies in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Just as we need to eat each day so too we need to ensure that we are receiving spiritual nourishment. However excellent last Sunday’s church service was, or however blessed you were by yesterday’s time of prayer, you need to open yourself to the breath of God’s Spirit today. You need him to strengthen you to live for him in the particular challenges and opportunities of this unique day.
I am struck by the fact that everything in this prayer is plural. The prayer begins with the words “Our Father in heaven” and here we pray for the food that we need. The moment we start praying we identify the fact that we are part of a family and when we think about getting fed it isn’t just about my empty stomach or my spiritual needs but about the feeding that we all need.
Physical food is available in abundance in this world but people have very unequal access to it. In some countries even today there is starvation, and in others including our own there are immoral levels of waste. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are taking our share of the responsibility for ensuring that food is made generally available to everyone throughout the world. When we pray that God will feed us spiritually we are expressing a longing that he will nourish everyone else as well. If you are feeling thoroughly well fed in body, mind and spirit that’s excellent but it isn’t enough. We pray that that same blessing will extend to men and women everywhere. What we are learning is that the Lord’s Prayer is incredibly radical. We are praying that God will fundamentally change our world.
QUESTION
In what way do you need to be fed today?
PRAYER
Lord God thank you that your understanding of me is so complete that you know exactly how I need to be nourished today. Amen