Tomorrow's Bread Today

  I have recently swerved into a deeper appreciation of the Prayer that Jesus taught his apprentices to pray, commonly known as "The Lord's Prayer."  It's the one that we can most-of-us can recite from memory.

  At the same time I have a acquired a new set of 'lenses' through which to view the prayer of Jesus.  Recently I heard a friend and teacher Bruce Friesen say that "We are always evaluating the world around us, but rarely evaluating the lense through which we see."  

George Ladd said that the Kingdom of God is The Presence of the Future.  So I keep coming to that phrase in the prayer that says, in most translations, "Give us this day our daily bread."  In the back of my mind it nags me that this phrase doesn't sound very 'kingdom.'  Recently it's caught my attention that there are alternative readings to that phrase that appear in the margins of many bibles.  For instance, in the New Living Translation, it gives an alternative reading:  or Give us today our food for tomorrow.   The English Standard version offers Or our bread for tomorrow  The Holmon Standard Bible gives this alternative: or our bread for tomorrow  The Greek word epiousios only occurs here and has been treated with some uncertainty.  But among the possibilities, the idea of praying for tomorrow's bread today is not only plausible but academically integrous.  

It also allows the prayer to take of more of a real kingdom dimension.  Anyone who has read multiple translations, and who is even an amateur theologian will readily admit that one's theology will influence how one translates the text.  If one translates through a kingdom lens, then it's plausible to make a case that our 'bread' comes from the future.  This is reinforced by the previous phrase, "on earth as it is in heaven."

When we think of daily bread, in a biblical sense, where do our minds go to find a context for such a phrase?  The answer is to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.  As the story goes, the children of Israel were fed manna from heaven.  In Exodus 16:4-5 we read Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."  God instructed them to pick the bread up from the ground every day.   And this was the rule for 40 years.  So it's really easy to see the principle of daily provision in the scripture.

But we know that the wilderness economy was not a permanent one but a temporary one.  God's destiny was that they would occupy and enjoy the promised land, where they would enjoy a land flowing with milk and honey.  The later writers of scripture would develop this as a place of 'rest', which was theologically concurrent with the laws of the Sabbath.  

So the children received daily bread, BUT there was a caveat:  They received daily bread and gathered daily bread for only six days.  There was one day of the week where they did not gather daily bread.  This day was the day before the Sabbath.  On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' (Exodus 16:22-23)

So there actually was a day where they gathered 'tomorrow's bread today'.  The Sabbath was the day of rest for the people of God.  The entire third and fourth chapters of Hebrews describes the New Covenant meaning of rest as a restful confidence in Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. (Hebrews 3:1)  That state of rest is characterized by faith.  And faith, as defined in a later chapter of the same book, "is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]."

It is not a question of whether God provides.  Neither is it a question of how.  Rather the question is from wher God's daily provision comes.  This is what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:  So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.(Matthew 6:31-34)  What Jesus is saying here is that worry does not, nor will it ever, produce the kingdom.  Present faith will manifest the provision.  All provision is from the future and worry is the misuse of our God-given imagination to conjure the future, when in fact it destroy the object of that worry: supply.

So Father, thank you that you supply supply tomorrow's bread today.  Because it's Your kingdom, power and glory!  That's a prayer that makes me happy!