The Lord's Prayer: The Fourth Petition

The fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer is this:  "Give us this day our daily bread."

What does this mean? "God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving."

Of course, it's best when the "meaning" doesn't include the very word we're trying to understand, i.e., daily bread.  But before we turn our attention to "daily bread," notice that the focus here is the effect praying this prayer has on us.   It's not that we won't have daily bread unless we pray for it!  Quite the contrary - God gives daily bread to all people, even evil people.

No.  We are to recognize that we receive all that we have from the hand of a gracious God and thank Him for it.

But what is "daily bread"?  This is the answer the Reformers gave:  "Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like."  In other words:  Everything good in this life comes as a gift from God's hand!

Of course, when most of us think about the claim that "everyone" gets daily bread, we immediately think of hungry and starving people.  How are they receiving their daily bread?  A fuller answer will have to wait for another time, but the short answer is this:  They are still alive and God is supporting them in this flesh for as long as they are to remain in this flesh.  No.  They are not being cared for as God desired it in the beginning, but sin and the curse of the fallen creation have put a new "spin" on daily bread.  Now we have to "scrape by" to make a living.  Thank God it won't always be this way!