Did You Realize That God is Still Providing For Our Daily Bread?
Good Morning Friends,
During our community’s Lenten Soup for the Soul series we have been hearing messages on the Lord’s Prayer and yesterday a group of Protestants and Catholics heard a homily from a Presbyterian minister on “give us our daily bread” and next week we hear the verse on “forgive us our debts,” at the YMCA in Naples. And I guess I really do not need to tell you that we have debts we cannot repay. Anyway the experience is certainly something to pray about for it does give us insights into the human condition and Holy History. You see, scripture declares God’s provision and abundance. For example, Did You Realize That God is Still Providing For Our Daily Bread?
Scripture: The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much manna as they needed. Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
Exodus 16: 17-19 (NIV)
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (NRSV)
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Matthew 20:1-16 (NRSV)
Message: Bart Simpson who once prayed, “God we paid for all this stuff, so thanks for nothing.” Bart, of course, got it all wrong. Everything in our lives is provided for in some fashion or another and indeed we do need to be thankful. Friends, Kingdom provision is different from our earthly concept of provision. You see, the mana may have stopped but the bread is still being provided in ways that look a lot like grace that connects us to a different order. Maybe that is why saying grace and saying a prayer at meal time essentially means the same thing. Of course our hearts have a problem with this grace and perhaps that is why it is so difficult to receive and so difficult to share. It is the scandal of our faith that we do not understand the nature of daily bread. It is a disgrace that we find it so difficult to forgive others. It is the great sadness of our existence. We are never quite happy when grace is given to those who don’t deserve it, barely recognize it and rarely appreciate it. The reality is that grace is not often believed and is not often understood. And we rarely grasp the full extent of the grace we have been provided. In the end grace means that no one is too bad to be saved…we only have to be willing to receive it. It also means that some of us may reject God’s grace because we think we can do it on our own. The problem with grace is that it cannot help us until we are desperate enough to receive it. So even the Bart Simpsons of this world need a little grace and that, like today’s scripture, is supposed to make us feel uncomfortable. If it doesn’t we probably didn’t get its message. In today’s parable the employer- God- realizes that the men who worked only one hour needed as much to feed their families as those who worked all day. God is like that … For work, to be God’s work, has to be done according to His way with righteousness and dignity. To God we are more than numbers on a payroll. He engages us personally with abundant grace…a grace we must not ever think is something we deserve or have earned. This perspective turns our world perspective upside down. We learn that it is human nature to think that we can gain God’s love based on how we respond to Him but that is not God’s way. Friends, grace is the best gift we as Christians can give because it is the best gift we have ever received. We receive it when we come alive in Christ as he wipes the tears from our eyes. We receive it because he has paid the price, He has done the work, and He has served as a substitute for us. The important lesson to learn is that the grace we receive needs to be passed on. That is the labor of our lives, but not something for which we can take credit.
Pray we receive God’s grace and eagerly share it with others. Pray we give thanks that life is not fair. Pray that we are content with what God gives us. Pray that we seek the Kingdom first, that grace not be so hard to believe, so hard to accept, so hard to receive. Pray that we choose life. Pray that we are not envious about the grace given to others. Pray that we learn to share the overabundance of grace that Christ has made available to us in our life. Pray we realize that we cannot use it all. Pray we realize that to horde grace away is insane. Pray that the notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge absolutely unconditional is like daily manna….daily bread. Pray we realize that the world hungers for it and when it descends in the silent desert of our lives it brings us the sweet sound of grace. Pray we experience amazing grace in our daily lives. Pray it falls at our feet like daily manna needing to be shared before it is lost. Pray we become truly totally dependent upon God for our daily bread…the food of life. Pray we forgive.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 