Sometimes context doesn’t matter. Things seem clear by themselves. At face value.

Like a request for bread. What could be more simple? “Give me food today. (Please).”

For the people hearing this prayer for the first time, the request was only partly about the future or about today. It had everything to do with the past.

Israel was in the desert, having left Egypt (with God’s assistence). They were, they thought, without food (though they did have flocks of animals with them.)

They fussed about being without food. And God gave them manna. It was some kind of seed or flake or something that could be ground and made into bread. It showed up every day. Well, every day but one every week.

On that day, on the sabbath day, they didn’t get any manna. But on the day before, there was enough for two days.

Six days out of seven for forty years. It was an incredible number of every days. It was an incredible amount of daily bread.

For Israel, wandering in the desert, the prayer that Jesus taught reflected their experience. Every day, each day, the bread for that day and no more. You had to go collect it, but you couldn’t save it.

Every morning there was faith. Every morning there was food.

I wonder if the daily asking was a way to remember complete dependence? I mean, we aren’t exactly in the desert. We aren’t exactly in need of daily provision. We have plenty of everything.We could almost ask for bread every two weeks, just as a way to acknowledge, on payday, that we are working hard to earn our daily bread.

For Israel, in the desert, it wasn’t about their great jobs, their hard work. It was about a faithful God daily giving bread.