Give Us Today

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The Lord’s Prayer.

This famous prayer has been recited before and after various ball games, taught to young children in youth groups, shared in sermons, and is easily recognized.

Over the last few weeks, this powerful prayer has once again caught my attention. From church sermons to hearing others share what it means to them, the Lord has been making sure that I tune back into this important passage Jesus taught. And as I have dug deeper into these verses, one specific phrase caught my attention.

In Matthew 6:11, it says, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Much to my surprise, after a little research, this phrase in particular is one of the most recognizable.

A 2025 Daily Citizen article shared that, “A recent international poll shows more people in the United Kingdom recognize a line from the Lord’s Prayer than from Star Wars, Shakespeare, Dickens or Churchill. In May, research firm Savanta asked over 2,000 UK adults to match seven famous lines from literature, history and pop culture to their sources from a multiple-choice list. Over 80% of respondents correctly attributed, [‘]Give us this day our daily bread,[’] to the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6.”

This comparison made me smile, as it shows just how impactful this prayer has been not only for us as believers, but to culture as a whole.

Yet, as I began to ponder that specific phrase, this request became real to me, and I suddenly realized it is talking about more than just the bread and butter we eat for breakfast.

Instead, it is a simple (and powerful) way we can come before our Father Who art in heaven and ask Him to provide everything we need to complete our day.

Not tomorrow, not three years from now – but our needs for today.

As I have frequently mentioned in previous blogs, I believe that one of the easiest things that we can do is get wrapped up in the to-do lists for the day and what is on our agenda for the week. So much so that often it is hard to live our lives day by day, leaning into what the Lord is trying to show us in the current moment we are experiencing.

C.S. Lewis Institute recorded John Wesley’s commentary on this prayer. When it came to this verse (mentioned above), he said:

We are to take no thought for the morrow. For this very end has our wise Creator divided life into these little portions of time, so clearly separated from each other, that we might look on every day as a fresh gift of God, another life, which we may devote to His glory; and that every evening may be as the close of life, beyond which we are to see nothing but eternity.

How right he is!

We are not promised tomorrow. So why do we so often dwell on it?

In James 4:13-14, Scripture carefully explains,

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

But as feeble humans, we can find it hard to rest in this truth.

Instead, we rush and run, trying to accomplish everything on our own timetable and in our own strength. In the middle of trying to do so, we often overlook the beauty of the grace He is trying to show us today.

When we open our eyes each morning, we are given the glorious gift of another day – another moment to celebrate the goodness of God. If He so chooses to grant us that gift, we should trust Him to provide for us exactly what we need to get through each day and the patience to focus on tomorrow's worries – tomorrow.

Right now, I pray that He would simply give us today and all that is needed to honor Him through it!

So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:34).

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