Daily Bread Is Only Enough for Today

Do you ever struggle with your thoughts? With worry? With all the things that could happen tomorrow or next week or next year? Maybe it’s just me. I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about what it means to ask God for our daily bread. I’m no mind reader, but I hear the prayer requests. You’ve heard mine. I think it’s safe to say that many of us spend a fair amount of time thinking about things we cannot control. Things we wish were different. Things we desperately want answers to.

Let’s start with food. Always a good plan in my book.

I’m no biologist or doctor, but I do understand this about food. It only stays in our bodies for a certain amount of time, and then it’s time to replenish. You can’t bank food in your body for days to subsist upon. I mean, there is fasting. There is weight loss. I’m saying here, generally, we need to eat on a daily basis for our body’s systems to function optimally. Daily bread.

Come away with me to the time of the parting of the Red Sea, the wandering Israelites, and a leader named Moses who was tasked with leading this enormous group of people. They had spent generations in Egypt, including years in bondage to cruel taskmasters. God had made a way for their freedom, and now they were making their way toward the Promised Land.

The Lord was teaching these people to trust Him. Follow Him. Listen to Him. They were learning how to be a people dependent on their God for all of their needs. No longer were they living under the control of their Egyptian slave masters. God was teaching them a new way to live, reshaping their understanding of who He was and what it meant to belong to Him. One area where they needed to learn dependence was food and drink. They liked eating on a regular schedule. Let’s be honest, so do we.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow My instructions.”

Exodus 16:4, HCSB

Just gather what you need. Take enough to fill your stomach. Leave the rest. Depend on there being provision tomorrow. (There was an exception before the Sabbath, when God instructed them to gather enough for two days.) What does this teach us?

Dependence.

In Egypt, they had relied on slave masters. People who did not care for or love them. People who abused them and held them hostage in fear and hardship. Now they were slowly learning that God was their provider. He would be giving them what they needed. Time after time, they were not given storehouses in the wilderness. They were given what God knew they needed, when they needed it. So often it wasn’t according to their timeframes, and they complained and questioned. Let’s be honest, so do we.

We want to know what comes next. We want to know that the treatment is going to work, the bills will be paid, the diagnosis will improve, and the people we love will be okay. We want tomorrow’s answers today. But the Israelites were learning to trust the Lord for what He provided each morning. They were learning that the God who had delivered them from Egypt was the same God who would care for them in the wilderness.

Friends, let’s now look at the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Matthew 6:9–13, HCSB (excerpt)

Notice the middle there? Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for our daily bread. Not monthly or weekly bread. Daily bread. We have something right here. We are not meant to spend our lives living in tomorrow or next month. We are not meant to keep living in yesterday or worrying about next week. This is what we have been given. Today. Today’s bread.

I’m not saying that we don’t make plans or save money. It is our mindset of daily dependence upon the Lord and His provisions that I’m talking about. My chronic health issues create a focus in me that sometimes moves my reliance and hope onto a doctor’s word or a treatment. I want to not be like this, quite honestly. I’m thankful for the doctors who care for me and the treatments available. But I know how easily my hope can become attached to the possibility that this treatment will finally be the one that makes everything better.

I have a dear friend in a wheelchair who would really love to not be there. Or another whose father’s cancer is moving through his body. Or one who is desperately trying to change their financial picture. I could go on and on, couldn’t I? We all know people carrying burdens that are heavy. Some of us are those people. Thorns that we wish the Lord would remove, and yet…

Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8–10, HCSB

Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove his thorn. And the Lord didn’t remove it. Instead, He told Paul that His grace was sufficient. His power would be perfected in weakness. I wonder how many of us have prayed for something to be taken away, only to find ourselves still carrying it the next morning. I know I have.

God, at times, does not remove the thorn. Rather, He gives His beloved His presence, His grace, and His strength to endure the pain. How? Daily bread. His grace for this day. His power for this moment. Not necessarily an explanation for why the thorn remains or a promise that tomorrow will look different, but the grace we need to walk through today with Him.

Another part of this is trust. HUGE part of this is trust. We trust who God is in our lives. That He is good. That He does good.

Even in the pain.

I think this is where I struggle sometimes. I’ve written about finding refuge in God amid chronic pain, and I know what Scripture says about God’s goodness. I know He is faithful. I’ve seen His faithfulness in my own life over and over again. But when I’m hurting or dizzy or wondering how I’m going to manage something that used to be so simple, my thoughts can wander right back to what I wish were different. I start looking for answers that haven’t come yet. I start borrowing worries from tomorrow.

And I’m reminded again of those Israelites in the wilderness. They woke up each morning needing bread. They couldn’t gather enough on Monday to make themselves independent of God for the rest of the week. They needed Him again on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. Each day was another opportunity to trust that the Lord would provide.

Maybe that’s part of what He is teaching me, too. I don’t need to have all of tomorrow figured out today. I don’t need to know how every circumstance is going to change. I can ask Him for what I need for this day and trust that when tomorrow comes, He will still be the same faithful God.

That doesn’t mean the pain disappears. It doesn’t mean every prayer is answered the way we hope. It doesn’t mean we won’t cry or struggle or need to remind ourselves of what is true. But it does mean that we can keep coming to Him. Again and again.

I don’t think the goal was ever to stop needing God. I think the goal is to learn that He can be trusted.

So today, when my thoughts start racing ahead of me, I want to remember the manna. I want to remember the prayer Jesus taught us. And I want to remember Paul’s words: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Not because I have everything figured out. Not because I know what tomorrow holds. But because I know the One who will be there when tomorrow comes.

Daily bread is only enough for today.

And today, His grace is sufficient.