Introduction to Daily Bread

Introduction to Daily Bread

“Give us this day our daily bread” is the most fundamental prayer we can ask on behalf of ourselves. Knowing this, our Lord not only commanded us to pray for this every day but also offers Himself to us as our daily bread.

As the Bread of Life that offers Himself to us each day as true spiritual food, Jesus comes to us in many ways. The words and images of the feedings of the 4000 and 5000 (especially in the Gospel of St. John) remind us that it is through faithful participation in the covenantal meal of the Holy Communion that Jesus feeds us. Through the creatures of bread and wine, Jesus gives His Body and Blood to us and feeds us at His heavenly banquet.

But He feeds us in other ways. In his Sermons on New Testament Lesson, St. Augustine expresses his belief that the feeding of the 4000 isn’t just about filling the bellies of men with bread and fish, nor is it solely about the Holy Communion. For St. Augustine and others, the Bread of Life is also the Holy Scriptures, upon which we are to feed every day, for they are the words of life. That the Word of God is also the Bread of God is satisfyingly illustrated by the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent in the Book of Common Prayer, in which we ask God to “Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.”

However, Christians in the twenty-first century (and probably all others) often do not properly eat or digest the Word of God. I’ve noticed some of you snacking in a sort of hit and run fashion, as you rush to lead your “real life.” “I’ll squeeze in a chapter of Bible reading today,” you think. Some of you are to be commended for devoting yourself to studying the Scriptures, but unfortunately it is in such a way that only the mind is fed. Meanwhile, the soul gets spiritual kwashiorkor, which may easily be identified by your distended spiritual belly.

Scripture must therefore be eaten with prayer, which may be likened to the blood into which the bread of life must be digested and ingested. Through a life of prayer, the Word of God is carried into every part of your life and becomes your life, just as a piece of digested food is broken down, enters the blood, and is carried to every part of your body. Only through a life of prayer, which is a third means by which Jesus becomes our daily bread, will the Word of God become spiritual food for us. After all, haven’t many of us had teachers of the Bible in college who have read and studied the Word but who, apart from a life of prayer and obedience, use their studies to starve themselves and others?

The most fruitful way I know of to receive my daily bread of Scripture is through the ancient practice of the lectio divina, or divine reading, with which I hope many of you are familiar. The essence of the lectio divina is not primarily to feed the mind: it is not just another Bible study to inform our minds. Instead, the lectio divina is formative reading, in which we allow the Holy Scriptures, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to form our very being. There are four basic steps in this divine reading:

1. lectio – reading/ listening
      a. cultivate the ability to listen deeply
      b. slow, formative reading
      c. based on previous reading and study
2. meditatio – meditation
      a. gently stop reading when you have found a word, phrase, or passage through which God is speaking to you personally
      b. ruminate over this passage, as a cow ruminates or chews its cud
      c. say it over and over, noticing different aspects – “tasting” it
      d. allow God’s word to become His word for you at every level of your being, ton interact with your inner world of concerns, memories, and ideas
3. oratio – prayer
      a. pray – dialogue with God – over the passage
      b. interact with God as one who loves you and is present with you
      c allow God to transform you thoughts, memories, agendas, tendencies, habits
      e. Re-affirm, repeat what God has just told you
4. contemplatio – contemplation
      a. rest in the presence of the One who has come to transform and bless you
      b. rest quietly, experiencing the presence of God
      c. leave with a renewed energy and commitment to what God has just told you

Daily reading of the Holy Scriptures through the lectio divina is just the food to nourish our impoverished spiritual lives, our over-emphasis on the intellect since time of Enlightenment, and our random foragings into the Bible that leave us unsatisfied.

At the end of each of my devotions I will offer a suggested Resolution for you to more profitably use your mediation on the Scriptures and put into effect what God has just been telling you. Use this suggested Resolution and the meditation itself in a way that is most beneficial to you.

Because I am offering these meditations and ruminations on the daily lessons out of my own experience with the lectio divina, they are not intended to comprise a systematic teaching on Scripture. Each meditation will not attempt to reproduce my actual time of devotion but only some of the fruit the Lord has given me for the day to live on. I have re-written these meditations in a way that is more general and applicable to everyone, and not just myself.

I have chosen to follow the lessons from the Daily Office from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer for a number of reasons. First, as a Reformed Episcopalian and Anglican, it is my spiritual tradition. More importantly, it is a system of reading that allows the entire Bible to be read in a systematic way so that our diet of spiritual food is a complete one. It is, as well, a program for eating the Scriptures that is descended from those spiritual gourmands of the early Church out of which and into which the Holy Scriptures were written and received.

My intention is to begin with the Morning Prayer lessons for each day of the week, excluding Sundays, and to begin with the Second Lesson in each Morning Prayer service, which is usually a New Testament lesson. When I have gone through all of these, I will go back and go through the Second Lesson for Evening Prayer, and then hope to have a complete set of devotions on the entire New Testament.

Eventually, I’d like to publish these as a book that could be used along with any lectionary or system for reading the Bible.

A few words of advice:
1. Use what is profitable, and don’t worry about the rest.
2. Don’t feel the need to meditate on every part of every Daily Bread. It’s not good to exhaust yourself spiritually. Also, don’t feel it necessary keep up with a different Resolution every day – you’ll drive yourself crazy in the process and unnecessarily feel like a failure. Work on what God is calling you to work on. Use the Daily Breads as they are most profitable for you.
3. If God stops you and tells you to do something different – for example to meditate on one small part of the lesson and apply it to your life today – drop everything else and listen to Him!
4. Most importantly: once you’ve developed the godly habit of meditating on the Bible every day – don’t ever let go of it!