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Give Us Our Daily Bread.

I have a tool caddie with lots of pockets. I put all my tools in it. If I have to fix something, I just take the tool caddie, and all my tools are organized and at my fingertips. On one occasion, I needed to fix a door, so I reached in to get my hammer, but it was gone. So I asked my brother, who worked with us at the time, if he had it. He replied that he had lost his own, so he had borrowed it to use, and it is now at his house in Maine. When I heard that, I grumbled. It is what we do when we run into a problem when the wheel falls off the cart, or we forget to take the cake out of the oven at the proper time. We grumble. It doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t fix the problem, or find solutions.

So when the Israelites left Egypt and walked into the desert, they did not see a meadow with grazing cattle or sheep, no supermarket, or banana trees. There was no food at all, so they grumbled. But grumbling didn’t do anything. It didn’t solve their immediate predicament, so they turned to God. God answered them and gave them plenty of food and water, more than they could eat for one day–just one day. Why? So that they would have to do the same thing the next day. They had to go to God every day and talk to Him. Every day, they would need God and experience God doing something for them. This is how you build a strong relationship, and for forty years, the Israelites got close to God from their daily encounters.

Then, the Israelites stepped into the Promised Land, and they were amazed at what they saw. Long meadows with grazing cattle and sheep, vegetation, and rich harvests. They asked the local pagans where they got such delicious food. The people of the region did not tell them about Deere tractor loaders or fertilizer. They told them that the reason they had great food was they worshiped the fertility god. So the Israelites said, “Let me get this straight. We pray to our God and we get bread and water. You pray to your God and you get ribeye and red cabernet.” You can see why the Israelites slowly drifted away from God; they thought that they did not need Him.

 There was a time when the whole world had turned away from God. So God said to Noah, “Build an ark.” He gave Noah specific instructions on how to build it in the shape of a giant shoebox. That is crazy. No one builds a boat in the shape of a box because you cannot steer it. So, Noah and his family were in the ark, tossed about in the waves. They had no control over their future or destination. They were completely dependent on God—the way life ought to be.

 God wants to have a personal relationship with us. That means we talk to God every day. When we pray the “Our Father,” we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We do not pray, “Give us Amazon.com.” So the next time the wheel falls off the cart, or we are missing a tool in our tool caddy, we could grumble, but there is another option. We can talk to God. 

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