Spiritual food
Give us today the food we need. Matthew 6:11
The Lord’s Prayer starts by looking at God and the coming of his kingdom. It now moves to three specific requests, the first of which is food. Nothing is more basic than nourishment – whether we are thinking about physical or spiritual food. Our bodies soon become weak and sick if we ignore the need to eat properly, and exactly the same is true of our spiritual strength. It simply isn’t possible to remain strong in our relationship with God if we are not being regularly fed with spiritual nourishment.
Our bodies give us very clear signs of our need to eat. If we miss a meal, we normally feel so uncomfortable that we take decisive action. Our spiritual hunger, however, is different. Although we will immediately suffer from not being spiritually fed, it is possible to get so distracted by life that we forget how desperately we need a good spiritual meal. We put it off until we have a bit more time. The fact is that we have as much need to be fed spiritually as physically, and the result of not being well nourished spiritually is disastrous.
It’s also important to notice that this is not a personal prayer. We are asking God to give us our daily bread. As we pray this prayer, we are acknowledging that we are part of a world that needs feeding, physically and spiritually. The population of the world is now about 8 billion. It has doubled in the past 50 years, but even so there is more than enough food for everyone. However, the distribution of that food is so unbalanced that there will be millions of people who go hungry today. We desperately need to pray for those who are working hard to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.
God also wants to feed us spiritually. Jesus described himself as the bread of life and he is able to give us exactly what we need to keep us strong. It’s right that we pray for ourselves but let’s never forget to pray for our Christian brothers and sisters and the spiritual food that they need to keep strong too.
QUESTION
What spiritual food is most important in sustaining us in our lives for God?
PRAYER
Lord God, give us today the food we need. Amen