March 20, 2021

I wish my Mother-in-Law had seen it. Cinnamon buns. The perfectly raised, nicely browned, sticky gooey glorious kind that I’ve only ever seen come out of her kitchen. On my counter. She would have been so happy for me!

Anything to do with yeast has befuddled me most of my life. Mother-in-law tried valiantly to teach me how to bake bread and cinnamon buns but so many bricks came out of my oven I finally stopped trying. It really bothered me. I cried, I’m serious…real big fat ploppy tears over my inability to bake bread.

We all know of course that it was more than that. It was about failure (the absence of perfection) and the pressure I put on myself to be something that I inherently knew I was not. Whew bread~failure, we’ve gone deep in a hurry.

When I was a young woman with a young family I believed that failure was about not measuring up.

Unwritten rules seemed to be everywhere…in the way people spoke to each other, in the way they looked at your garden or your couch or your mud-splattered children or the 6 holes in your ears. Unwritten rules told you what time to be in church and how long you had to stay, who came for dinner and what you served them. Who you should ignore and who you responded quickly to. How you spoke to someone serving you, how you were spoken to when serving. That you had to hide your fear and wipe your tears so you didn’t appear weak.

But the rule of all rules, the key to all other rules was this:

You must keep yourself together 

ALL OF YOU

ALL THE TIME

ALWAYS PERFECTLY

Perfect house, perfect kids, perfect weight, perfect cooking skills, perfect garden, perfect smile, perfect perfect perfect but oh so broken inside. Broken.

This is not where I thought I was going today btw…forgive me

It got me thinking about bread. The filling, satisfying, comforting taste of fresh bread. It’s the best the day it’s baked, it’s the best when it’s still warm. It starts to lose it’s freshness by the next day that’s why day-old bread in the bakery is always on sale. What does this have to do with the pressures of failure or not measuring up to perceived standards?!

Can you grab your Bible and open it up to Matthew 6:11? Let’s read it together…

“Give us this day our daily bread”

Short, sweet and packed with a punch. We know it off by heart, this little verse tucked into the Lord’s prayer. 

Give us…this day our daily bread.

It’s interesting that it’s so boldly written…give us…if my kids had asked for something like that when they were young I would have told them to try again, ask nicer. It could be viewed as a demand or an entitled pronouncement except at the very heart of it is a realization that we are helpless and we can’t possibly provide this daily bread for ourselves, we receive it from the hand of God. The root of the request, then, is humility and not pride, an acknowledgment of who the provider is. We’ re asking him to fill us with himself, not for selfish reasons but because we are unable to live out his perfect will for our lives by our own feeble efforts. 

Give us…this day…our daily bread.

Today. We have no guarantees of time, the very breath we breathe is a gift. We are encouraged to live in the height, width, breadth and depth of today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Only today. The daily bread of today won’t change yesterday’s events, but it will give me perspective. The daily bread of today can’t help me predict tomorrow but it will help me prepare for it. It sustains me in real-time. His grace, his fullness, his mercy, love and comfort are for right now so that even if I’m a failure in everyone else’s eyes, I know better. Even when things aren’t easy, I remain sure there’s a bigger plan.

Give us this day…our…daily bread.

It’s personal, our daily bread. Jesus knows exactly what we need and will speak the words of life into us when we soak in his presence. It’s interesting how the Lord will open my eyes to a concept or truth as I read scripture that I hadn’t seen before, and it speaks to whatever situation I find myself in at that time. Has that happened to you too? Isn’t it a wonderful gift? Everything I could possibly need, he has already portioned out and it is tailored to fit exactly into my day.

Give us this day our…daily bread.

The Greek word used in this verse for “daily” refers specifically to a daily refreshing of your soul. The literal translation is that it fits the unique demands of the day. I heard a quote from the late boxer Marvin Hagler, he said:  “It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas.” Ouch. If we want the Lord’s sustaining power in our lives, we’re going to have to throw off all the excuses that prevent us from making HIM a priority. Jesus is the Bread of Life. He is our sustainer. He wants to meet with us every day so he can fill us with his presence. Why aren’t we at his feet every morning?   

The daily bread Jesus is speaking about doesn’t fill our tummies, it heals our hearts. When the pressures of life threaten to overrun us, Jesus reaches out both hands and offers us the very best thing he can~ himself. Daily communion with our Savior allows us to flourish and forgive and grant grace, it tenderly embraces us in our hour of deepest pain . I need that…today…every day.  

Give us this day our daily bread 

time to throw off my silk pajamas