Bread

Give us this day our daily bread —

not this week's bread, not the bread for the whole year, not bread enough to stop having to ask again.

This day. This portion. This enough.

The manna did not keep. Those who gathered extra found it rotten by morning. The lesson was the daily return, the daily dependence, the daily reminder that we are creatures and He is the one who feeds us.

I want the year's supply. I want to stop having to come back. I want to be sufficient unto myself.

But what He gives is this: the bread of today, fresh and enough, requiring me to return tomorrow and ask again.

And perhaps that is the gift I didn't know I needed: not independence, but the daily coming home.