Dear Epiphany Families,
These last two weeks I've been meditating on one short line of scripture, well known to us all. Give us this day our daily bread. This has become my pandemic prayer--in part a request for sustenance but increasingly about heart and spirit.
I love a well-stocked pantry, and this tether to security far predates the pandemic; it's my innate "Have a Plan" personality, honed through a childhood of financial instability. The early weeks of the shut down and distancing opened wide this need--this fear and distrust--as I worried about how and when and where to safely acquire groceries for my family, and how the food-insecure children at our elementary school would eat without the provided breakfast, lunch and snack.
This prayer that Jesus himself taught us--repeated in the books of both Luke and Matthew--is not asking for a well-stocked pantry. It is asking for nourishment sufficient for a day. It is the trusting of manna, the sharing of resources. As I read more about this prayer (how it has been understood by theologians, and in its original language) I was led to a verse in Proverbs, one I must have read before but only now heard. Hear it with me, please.
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the Lord?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God. (Proverbs 30: 8b-9)
I can't claim to pray this with absolute sincerity of intent right now, but I pray that our hearts will ever lean toward such a holiness and that difficult times like these will always produce a harvest of what we most need.
Peace be with you, Bryn
bhollenbeck@3crowns.org
