Sivan 7
Bread
“Give us today our
daily bread.” (Mat 6:11 ISR)
Food is one of the basic requirements for
survival; I have heard it said that man can only live for three days without
water, but can exist for up to three weeks without any type of food. It is not unreasonable to ask our Elohim for
His assistance in meeting this need, especially since our Creator is the One
who instilled the need for sustenance within us. However, there is an enormous gap between
what is a need, and what is a want.
I believe most of us can agree that some of the food that we eat is not
necessarily good for us; a diet of soda pop and Twinkies can eventually kill
us, just from the poisons we are consuming.
What is “our daily bread”? First, let us understand that we are requesting
bread (food) for this day only, not
enough to last us until the next pay day.
“Sufficient for each day …” (Mat 6:34) should always be our focus. Second, I truthfully believe that “our daily
bread” it
is meant to be food that is not only sustaining, but nourishing as well. I might
prefer to have rib-eye steak as opposed to black beans and rice, but the beans
and rice are filled with as much – if not more – nutrients as the steak. Being thankful and grateful for what ABBA does provide for us is always the key.
“Daily bread” does
not just pertain to physical food;
for millennia, bread has also been descriptive of spiritual food, that which we
find within the pages of the Torah.
Yeshua told us, quite firmly, that He
is “the bread of life”
(John 6:35), and it is not hard to follow the loop that goes back to
Torah. Messiah Yeshua is the Word (John
1:1-4), He is the truth (John 14:6), the Torah is truth (Ps 119:142), Yeshua is
light (John 8:12), and the Torah is light (Pro 6:23). Therefore, feasting upon the precepts of
Torah, as well as studying the example of our Messiah, should provide for us a
feast that will be satisfying.
The Amidah also speaks of provision. We must remember context and culture as we
study the Amidah, and recognize that
the Hebrew nation have always been an agricultural based people. All of their sustenance came from what they could
grow, and what livestock they could raise.
For these reasons, it is easy for us to understand the petition for the
earth to be blessed, in order that they would not be in want.
“Bless
this year for us, O Lord our God, together
with all the varieties of its produce, for our welfare. Bestow a blessing
upon the face of the earth.
O satisfy us with your goodness, and bless our year like the best of years.”[1]
“יהוה is my shepherd; I do not
lack.” (Ps 23:1 ISR)
©2018
No comments:
Post a Comment