This Day

“Give us THIS DAY our daily bread” - Matthew 6:11

Today. We look towards God to enable us this day to do the work we must. We look towards God to provide the things we need. For this day.

As I sit at my desk today looking to God, as I do most every day, I carry within me the effects of yesterday and the concerns for tomorrow - yet - I have been told by Jesus through the precious Holy Scriptures to look to Him to provide my daily bread for today. This day.

There is a distance between the seen of our lives and the unseen, a gap we long to fill with a bridge, frequently one of our own construction. I have been known to try to construct that bridge through my prayers. I know what I don’t want and I try to prevent that from happening in prayer. There is a place for that type of prayer when you consider prayers for family and loved ones, nothing wrong with that. Yet ultimately we are told to take up our cross and follow Him so we can’t control where He guides. I accept that intellectually yet what is that sense of concern for the future that tries to elbow its way to the front of my soul?

My father passed away on Easter morning this year. He was 97 years old and led a life filled with family, success, and love. He was a believer and I know that he is quite content now so the sadness of his passing is joined in me with the joy of a believer’s trust in Christ’s salvation. His decline was a progress very natural due to his age. His physical death was expected. The grief is real, yet the bridge we walked over in this instance was one we saw ahead. Somehow that made it easier.

But what about events ahead we never see coming? Do those events exist in our souls as possible situations of dread? Unseen possibilities of loss and struggle we long to be shielded from. What bridges of our construction are we endeavoring to build that will take us past those destinations to the places we prefer to be?

Sometimes I do that in my prayers. Sometimes I am erecting bridges.

So today I pray for today. And I pray my love for God and His presence in my life is all the bridge to tomorrow I will ever need.