Prayer

Prayer: “Give Us Today the Food We Need”
Scott Lyons
4/12/2010

The Father gives life and all that is necessary to it—not that we might be idle but that we might be free from anxiety. Yet we still worry because we do not fully believe. Or, perhaps, we worry because we have set our trust upon the Father’s gifts rather than on the Father himself, and the “worries of this life and the lure of wealth” are choking us (Matthew 13:22, NLT). God has made it clear to us that he does not desire our happiness so much as he desires us, so much as he desires that we be sharers in his life, converted to Christ, divinized, set aflame. It is true what the old bluegrass song says: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” We are afraid to die. We are afraid of being crushed as Christ was crushed, like olives in the press, and poured out for others. We are afraid that this petition reaches too far, beyond simple physical concerns and into spiritual ones. And so it does.

When we kneel and pray, “Give us today the food we need,” we are requesting eternal things. Some of us, when we pray, voice this request because we want to learn how to begin to trust our Father again and to trust him without reservation because “[He is] good and the Lover of mankind.” Then, even though the road ahead is filled with pain, we are content because our good Father is before us and behind us.

Within this petition is a unique word, epiousios (translated as the food we “need” in the NLT and as our “daily” bread elsewhere). To my knowledge, this word is only used in the Lord’s Prayer and is unique to Matthew and Luke.
There are a variety of interpretations of what the writers meant when using the word. But among them, let us remember that when we pray for our “epiousion” bread, we are literally asking our Father for our “super-essential” bread, and throughout the centuries, the Church has seen this bread, among other things, as the Bread of Life given to us that we might not hunger again. And thanks be to God, who gives us this Bread in his “today,” so that Christ, who is given, is always being given. And we, who are temporal and in constant need, must ask daily for the One who is always being given, and thus we daily receive him.
Yet as we kneel and pray, “Give us today the food we need,” we are also requesting temporal things. It is necessary for us to do so in order to confess that whether we are rich or poor, our daily sustenance is from the Lord and not simply the work of our own hands. (In the same way, we confess this truth as we give thanks for the food we eat.)

In this way, we also understand that the Lord instructs us to petition him for necessity and not for luxury. Just so we read in Proverbs 30:8-9 (NLT), “Give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Furthermore, the Lord’s Prayer is a common prayer, a prayer for us, and in this petition we pray for solidarity with the poor—that they too might receive their necessary food. And if it is a prayer for the poor, then we are reminded of our obligation to participate in this petition, to not only be supplicants but also to take part in the satisfaction of this plea. We cannot forget Christ’s parable about the beggar Lazarus (Luke 16) or Christ’s discourse on the final Judgment with the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). And so we become players within this petition as we offer up our own gifts, perhaps out of our own poverty, and as we offer up our very selves for “the least of these.”

Lastly, this petition is a request for today’s needs, and a cure for our anxiety, for “your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:32-34, NLT).

As you pray the Lord’s Prayer, all of these thoughts will not come to your mind. Who could expect them to? But one element may stand out from the rest because of the need you feel. The petition may feel different in the morning if you are overwhelmed by temporal needs, and then in the evening you may simply need Christ. Remember that the good Father knows all your needs. Remember that he loves you. And pray like this.