Give us today our daily bread. Matthew 6:11
“It is important that you ask, seek, and knock to keep yourself in right relationship with life itself. Life is a gift, totally given to you without cost, every day of it, and every part of it. A daily and chosen “attitude of
gratitude” will keep your hands open to expect that life, allow that life, and receive life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction — but never to think you deserve it.
Those who live with such open and humble hands receive life’s “gifts, full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into their lap” (Luke 6:38). In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over. For some reason, to ask “for your daily bread” is to know that it is being given. To not ask is to take your own efforts, needs, and goals — and yourself — far too seriously. Consider if that is not true in your own life.”
Richard Rohr in Breathing Under Water (London: SPCK, 2016), 57.
Yesterday we saw the need to radically change.
Today Rohr beckons us to be radically grateful every day so resentment does not take over and so we do not take ourselves too seriously. Let me explain this in plain terms.
Those who give thanks every day for God’s blessings with an attitude of gratitude and who trust God for daily bread experience deep satisfaction and grasp life as it was intended to be lived.
Those who don’t respond with a different attitude when things not go their way. Immediately they question God. “Why did you allow this or that to happen, God.” And, just like that, resentment has taken over.
These people then take it upon themselves to provide for their needs – because they did not find God faithful – and they act as if God is not the good Provider any longer, so they sort things for themselves.
God does not force these people to grasp life as He wants them to live it, so He lets them limp along with resentment. Despite their hard hearts, His goodness and mercy still pursue them all the days of their lives.
Where are you in this picture? Are you radically grateful or resentful. Be honest with yourself. You can choose the life of ask, seek, knock, and give thanks daily for daily bread received with open and humble hands.
Or you can open the door for resentment. The choice is yours. Or rather, you have already made the choice based on who your actions demonstrate you trust to supply your daily bread and everything else.
I fly to Australia today to speak at the International Society of Biblical Literature conference from 5-9 July 2026. Thanks for your prayers. Stay tuned for more information and a copy of the paper I will deliver.