Give us this day our daily bread

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

This morning, as I listened to the Rev. Kristin Hutson preach on the Lord’s Prayer, I found myself lingering on one line: Give us this day our daily bread.

It’s a line I’ve recited since I was a child, often without thinking too deeply about it. But today, Pastor kristin did what good preaching does. She broke it open.

She reminded us that when Jesus taught us to pray, He used us, not me.

Our daily bread. Not my daily bread.

That subtle shift in pronoun transforms the prayer from a private plea into a collective cry.

It becomes a radical act of solidarity with all of humanity.

And not just humanity, but all of God’s creation.

Everyone.

Everywhere.

Regardless of who they are, where they come from, or whether they fit into someone’s idea of who belongs.

But here we are, in a nation where that collective us is being deliberately unraveled.

We are cutting food programs for children.

Not metaphorically, literally.

Legislators are removing hot meals from lunch trays and slashing budgets that feed kids who rely on school as the only place they eat reliably. We are sabotaging SNAP and WIC, stripping poor families of the means to buy milk, fruit, or rice.

We are gutting Medicaid and Medicare, lifelines for the sick, the disabled, and the elderly. We have decided that healthcare is not a right but a commodity only the wealthy deserve.

And now we are watching as our government talks about abolishing USAID and other global programs that fight hunger, disease, and death on a scale most Americans cannot imagine.

Just yesterday, I watched a CNN report about a USAID-funded clinic in rural Central Asia that had lost its funding.

What used to be a modest but life-saving facility was now a hollow shell. The staff had been reduced to volunteers. Medicine was almost gone.

A reporter was speaking to a grandmother watching her unconscious 1-year-old grandson, desperate for help. And just as the reporter began to ask a question, the child died. On camera.

The screams of that grandmother and mother are now burned into my mind. I will never forget them. The sound didn’t fade with the news segment.

It followed me into sleep. Into prayer. Into this sanctuary this morning.

And so I return to the prayer. Give us this day our daily bread.

When Jesus spoke those words, He wasn’t speaking about individual survival.

He was teaching us to pray for a world where no child starves, no family suffers alone, no grandmother screams because the world turned its back.

You cannot say “Give us this day our daily bread” and then justify taking bread or medicine from the mouths of people you have deemed too foreign, too poor, too far away.

You cannot say “Amen” and then vote for policies that destroy the very systems trying to answer that prayer.

That line of the Lord’s Prayer convicts me. Because it’s not just a petition. It’s a summons.

Maybe it’s not only something we say to God. Maybe it’s something God is saying to us.

Will you help answer this prayer?

Will you be part of the us?