In what has become one of the most popular passages of Scripture, The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says we are to pray for the Father to “Give us this day our daily bread.”
As we let this idea soak deeper into our hearts, we are confronted sometimes by our excess. We can readily admit that some of the things we long for are not our daily “needs” but we daily think it’s neat to have. That 5th pair of brown shoes to go into the closet, etc doesn’t actually qualify as a “need” now does it?
Yet, some of us can purchase these type of items freely without it having a negative impact on our ability to take care of the things we need. In fact, some of us have versions of the things we need in ways that far exceed our actual necessities. A five bedroom house for a family of three (with one of the bedrooms functioning as a “yoga room” and the other as a “play room” despite the massive play areas in the backyard) are nice and I’m sure they can be justified if you lied tried hard enough. But its not really a “need,” right? But you bought it and can afford it with no issues whatsoever. You’re not overextended and you’re not “house poor.” You don’t just have your needs – your daily bread – given to you, you have a certain level of wealth or prosperity.
But what if your prosperity was God fulfilling the entirety of your prayer? What if He wasn’t answering your prayer to “give me this day my daily bread” but, rather He was answering the original call to “give us this day our daily bread.”
The Lord’s prayer shows us the communal nature of our faith.
We see the communal connectedness on display in the instructions of the prayer through Jesus’s words in the scriptures. He says “OUR Father…Give US…and forgive US…lead US not…deliver US…” Nothing but communal, collective words used here. Through the Lord’s Prayer we see the communal nature of the Body of Christ. So what if as God is meeting my needs and supplying MY daily bread, the prosperity and wealth I’m experiencing is to be used expressly for the supplying of someone else’s daily bread? That would no longer be “my” daily bread being supplied but “our” daily bread.