Musings on Our Daily Bread

The Lord's Prayer, a popular passage of the Bible, asks that we be daily given our "daily bread". In my morning meditations today, I considered the question of what is my "daily bread". I have, since childhood when I first learned this prayer, always though of it in purely material terms; food, shelter, clothing, etc.. This morning it occurred to me that my "daily bread" is more those physical, spiritual and relational gifts that are provided that allow me to get my daily bread, as well as to enable and provide other's daily bread. This realization then led to the question of how well I use my "daily bread" to get, enable and provide daily bread. Hmmm.

Further consideration pressed me to inventory all the skills, relationships, knowledge, and wisdom I have to leverage, and all the needs, problems, dilemmas and evils in the world I can leverage my "daily bread" inventory on, in exchange for my "daily bread".

So often, we have enough "daily bread" but 1) we discount what it is, 2) we don't know who most wants to buy it, 3) we are unskilled in how to sell it, and 4) we can be lazy about continually improve it. I am convinced that we if we were more aware and skilled on all these points, our self-esteem, value to others, sense of purpose and meaning, and ability to provide for ourselves and others would improve, and not just materially either.

May we become better at using and offering the "daily bread" that we are all daily provided.