THE PRAYER OF "THE TRUE BREAD"

Give us today our daily bread.

Matthew 6:11

MY daughter-in-law Julie made fresh homemade bread every day for the first five years of her marriage. Having been the recipient of many of those fragrant, nourishing loaves, I know what a gift they were—especially in this era of mass-produced food.

When Jesus told us to pray to our heavenly Father daily for the nourishment that we require, he was communicating on more than one level.

He was telling us to seek God for physical food—the vitamins, minerals, grains, and vegetables—our bodies need.

But he was concerned with much more than that.More than what we find in the amply supplied bakery departments of our local supermarkets, more than the homemade tortillas that are mixed and patted flat with the dirty hands of women along city streets in Third World countries, more than the unleavened bread of sacred ceremonies, God wants to supply us with the bread of his presence, the nourishment of his friendship.

He wants to meet us in our times of prayer and enter into a personal relationship with us.

For he has said that “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”

Matt. 4:4.

Jesus knew what it would take for us to survive in life. We were created for a relationship with him and with his Father.To feast on the true bread of the Lord’s friendship is to experience spiritual satisfaction, to know an inner sufficiency as God supplies all our needs. It is to find every yearning filled with his nearness, every question answered by his love.

Jesus was the Word incarnate who was with God from the beginning.

“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made. . . . In him was life, and that life was the light of men”

John 1:3-4.

Who is more qualified to know the requirements for our survival?

On a mountainside by the Sea of Galilee Jesus demonstrated his power to supply a symbol of what he would later call “the true bread” (John 6:32).

There, surrounded by a hungry crowd, he took five small barley loaves and two small fish and fed an enormous crowd. Five thousand people ate and twelve baskets were filled with leftover pieces.

That night Jesus went out to a boat, but the people refused to let him alone. They tracked him by land first, and then by sea. When they finally found him in Capernaum, they asked,

“Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered, “You are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you”

John 6:25-27.

In prayer we feed on the Bread that is essential, the True Bread that endures through to eternal life.

Father, I thank you that you desire to feed me with the “true bread” of your Son, for he is the “food” that endures.

I receive the bread of his presence into myself—body, soul, and spirit—with joy and gratitude.

Amen

#pray