Tuesday, July 23

Two Daily Word “housekeeping” notes:

1.  I will strive for fewer words in the Daily Word! (But the first of the week will always be a bit longer)

2. Don’t let this become a “should.” If you read it and it’s life-giving, great. If you skip it one day, don’t feel you have to go back and read it. Let’s trust that we’ll get what we need each day.

Which is what Jesus was reminding us when he taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He is reminding us of the “enough-ness” we enjoy in the life of God, and inviting us to stay in the present, neither dwelling on the past nor living in the future. The first often leads to regret and the second to anxiety… God’s abundant life is all around us today. God’s promises are real for this day, in all our circumstances.

Trusting in God’s daily provision might seem more reasonable if we tuned in to what we pray right before that: “Your kingdom come.”

With those three words, we invite the power and presence and peace of God’s kingdom, what I like to call the “energy field of God,” to be made real among us. We are saying, “Let it be so!” and believing that this spiritual reality is here, in us, around us, interwoven with the biological and intellectual and emotional life we enjoy as God’s creatures. It is a radical prayer, to speak God’s life into the world around us, into our own lives.

Today, invite God to make you more aware of God’s field of being –

  where do you see, hear, sense, smell, taste, touch God’s life?

Then pray with all your heart, “Give me today my daily bread.”

If you feel anxious, ask yourself – what are you worried about running out of? 

    (Time? Food? Money? Someone’s good will toward you?)

Visualize that in a basket of “not-enough-ness” and hand it off to Jesus or mentally put it on a shelf.

Then take down the basket labeled “Today,” and ask God to show you what’s in it.

I have a feeling it will be more than enough to deal with, more than enough to fill you.

Amen! Let it be so.