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"Give us this day our daily bread"

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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Monday, 24 June 2013. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.


AS Lammas approaches, our Food Matters team have produced a host of bread related resources.

Joanna Collicut reflects. . .

Earlier this week I made a sandwich from a loaf of wholemeal bread.

As soon as I had bitten into it I could tell it wasn't fresh.

On checking with my husband I found that he had bought the loaf two days previously and it had been sitting in the bread bin untouched since then.

We decided to use it for toast. There are few things in life as good as the smell and taste of freshly baked bread.

Nowadays we can freeze bread, but it isn't quite the same; and there is no disguising the taste of stale bread.

Bread just doesn't keep very well. This was of course equally true in first century Palestine, when Jesus instructed his followers to pray each day for enough bread for that day alone.

This is in the spirit of his teaching that we should not worry about the future but instead embrace a relationship of trust with our heavenly Father: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. " (Matthew 6:24 KJV).

This attitude of trust is difficult for most of us to live out in 21st century industrialised Britain, with our capacious store-cupboards and freezers and our pick of a range of supermarkets, all of whose shelves are groaning with produce.

But the Lord's Prayer is a gift that can help us bring to mind the situation of many across the world and - in the current economic climate - some on our own doorstep who do not know where tomorrow's bread is coming from. If you choose to take up the suggested Lammas activity of baking bread you may find yourself reflecting on another saying of Jesus: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. " (Matthew 13:33 NRSV). 'a little good yeast can leaven a whole loaf. 'Praying the Lord's Prayer places us in solidarity with those who have only enough for today.

In this way it opens the kingdom to us and inspires us to make a difference perhaps by giving to an overseas aid organisation, perhaps by getting involved in a local food bank initiative, perhaps by reviewing our own attitude to food and our readiness to trust God.

We may feel that what we can do is only a drop in the ocean.

Jesus sees it differently: a little good yeast can leaven a whole loaf.

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