Burying Wastefulness

Matthew 6:7-13

Give us this day our daily bread. (Matt 6:11)

I sometimes wonder if the petition “give us this day our daily bread” is a hollow prayer for those living in a culture of affluence and abundance. If one doesn’t know what it means to live with the question of where the next meal is coming from, this petition can come across as empty, pious formality. Heck, many of us are shunning bread altogether in an effort to lose the weight that our easy access to fast food has created!

Perhaps we can reframe the prayer and allow it to shape us. This petition should call to mind that all that we have comes as a gift from God. In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes: “In fact, God gives daily bread without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving.” He then describes daily bread as “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.” 

On Ash Wednesday we prayed, “Our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us, we confess to you.” Wastefulness arises, in part, when we take things for granted. When there is plenty, there’s no worry about tomorrow for there will always be more. In praying for daily bread, perhaps we would do well to not take things for granted, to use them wisely, and to give thanks for what we have today.

Burying Wastefulness

·         Pay attention to those things you throw away

·         Reduce, re-use, recycle

·         Conduct an audit of how you use your time

·         Re-fill your own water bottle

·         Make your prayer one of thanksgiving

 Matthew 6:7-13 NRSV

 7 "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 

 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

 9 "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

 11 Give us this day our daily bread.

 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

 13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.