The petition from the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”, is a prayer built on trust. Trust in God’s creation and God’s universe. Trust that it is all “tilted toward enough, toward abundance, and ultimately toward our flourishing.”[1]

That’s a grandiose dream, you might say. How is it that God’s universe is tilted toward enough, toward abundance, and ultimately toward our flourishing when life seems anything but? And yet, we continue to pray to God, week after week, “Give us today our daily bread.” And when we pray, “Give us today our daily bread” we expect that God will provide. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer built on trust.

Today, the church commemorates Saint Patrick. “According to his Confessio, Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a youth and spent six years enslaved, tending sheep in the Irish wilderness. During this time of isolation and deprivation, Patrick writes that he often prayed hundreds of times a day, asking for God’s [provision and] protection.”[2] You don’t pray hundreds of times a day unless you expect God will somehow provide. Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, trusted God in moments of desperation.

How can we build this trust that God gives us enough? How do we get from deficit to surplus? This is a question that preoccupies many of us on Annual General Meeting Day. How do we get from scarcity thinking to an abundance mentality? This is a question that preoccupies those who want to grow spiritually and deepen their faith.

First we need to acknowledge how we have been conditioned by our early life experiences. And, acknowledge the powerful influence of current day media and marketplace messaging—that we always need more, and that we don’t ever have enough. ‘More’, of course, is a relative concept.

Most of us only need to look in our closets, garages and storage pods to recognize that we are a “stuff-drunk culture”[3]. Having acquired more than we can handle, our vision, our thinking, is so much formed by these crammed spaces in our minds and our homes.

In some ways, the people of Jesus’ day were no different. What is enough and what is more are, again, relative concepts.

And Jesus taught a reshaping of those stories, the narratives, the images and memories they told. Jesus taught a reshaping of the narrative to produce a vision of abundance for all. This is what Jesus was up to when he said, over and over again: “You have heard it said … but I say to you”![4]

“Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says in the Gospel for today, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”[5]

The picture Jesus paints, the narrative he is reshaping for his followers, suggests a pattern we have heard, as Christians, time and time again: Death and resurrection. Not death alone. Not resurrection alone. But, from the perspective of life on earth, both.

And by saying ‘death’, I mean little deaths and losses that you experience throughout life: divorce, job loss, migration, moving, leaving, losing, sickness, ill health, accidents, tragedy, death of loved ones, relationship break-downs – these are all little deaths.

The point is that Jesus, while not denying the pain associated with all these losses, frames them within the larger scheme of life. A life that we begin to see anew. A life that heralds new beginnings, new opportunities, and new-found hope. That’s the promise of resurrection.

In Psalm 27 (v. 13), the Psalmist expresses his faith: “I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” Not just after we die. Not just in heaven. But here! On earth! In this world, in the regular course of our lives crappy as it sometimes goes! “Give us today our daily bread” is a bold statement of faith and belief in tasting something good from God in our lives on earth.

So, is it deficit and scarcity? Or surplus and abundance? That is a question of faith. So, where do we begin in shifting, transforming, the way we understand what is enough and what is more? Where can we start?

Well, I am looking outside more these days, letting my eyes wander over the still-sleeping trees and breathing in that promising air. And it strikes me that creation is not anxious. It is content with its own place, function and possessions. It frets not over hoarding out of fear of not having enough. Some trees rest for hundreds of years in their own sustaining power, receiving and giving over time. The scrub grass doesn’t frantically pace back and forth, catastrophizing whether enough water will soak down to its roots.

We can learn something about enough by gazing at nature. Defining enough in the way of creation means seeing contentment as fluid and flowing: “Sometimes we will have more, and sometimes we will have less. There are winters, and there are springs.” The question is how we approach both seasons.

God’s vision operates in abundance, not scarcity. Life in Christ is rooted in the belief that there is always enough of whatever we need. The picture Jesus paints and the narrative he reshapes leads us to a non-anxious posture toward the world: A calm spirit, a tender heart, open both to receive and to give whatever God has in store. “God invites us to use calm energy and unhurried effort in our lives, fueled with thoughts about a universe where pine trees and sparrows never worry about what comes next.”[6]

Let us not be fish arguing about who owns the water they are all swimming in. Let us not be birds who draw lines in the sky separating who can fly where. Let us be people who share, who are generous—in some seasons of life receiving and in other seasons of life giving what God has first given to us all.

Give us today our daily bread. Amen.

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[1] Tygrett, C. (2023). The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons, p. 147. Broadleaf.

[2] Parker, S., Watters, M. (2022, March 17). Who Was Saint Patrick? Diocese of St. Augustine. https://www.dosafl.com/2022/03/17/who-was-st-patrick?

[3] Ibid., p. 74

[4] See, for example: Matthew 5:21,27,33,38,43.

[5] John 12:24

[6] Ibid., pp. 76-77