"Our daily bread"

MARJORIE N. BUFFUM

What a joy to pray each day in trust and gratitude to our Father-Mother God, "Give us this day our daily bread"! It is a prayer of utter reliance upon and expectation of good. It need not be merely a petition in the ordinary sense of the word, but may also be a recognition of a true state of things about to appear. The word "daily" implies that this bread has come to us every day in the past, and will come to us every day in the future. And so it is in past assurance and future trust that we are considering the supply and need of to-day. And how inspiring to remember that it is the supply that brings about the need; that it is because the attraction of ever present Spirit is the irresistible and only attraction that the heart of mortals yearns after its spiritual food. How feeble the hunger for bread compared to the longing for love! How glorious to realize that multitudes who once starved are praying this prayer with an ever increasing faith that it is answered, because our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, from her God-inspired summit of understanding, has in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 17), given us its spiritual interpretation: "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections."

Since time began, the hunger of the human heart has existed; and did not Jesus the Christ bless this hunger and its appeasement when he said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled"? But in spite of his teachings have not mortals gone on believing that hunger can be allayed by materiality? Do not we see people everywhere trying to turn stones into bread, working for the husks of material accumulation, and all because of ignorance of God and His perfect creation? Would the perfect Father, the God who is Love, fail to supply His children's needs? Never! Then it is a misapprehension of the need that causes the seeming absence of supply.

We are told in the Scriptures that God made man in His own image and likeness; and the teachings of our Master uphold and confirm this statement. Therefore in reality all of man's needs are already supplied. But in the false sense of things called mortal existence there is a great a crying need for the realization of the truth of being and the consequent healing of humanity's sins, sorrows, and diseases. Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook shows us the way to have all our needs supplied and our diseases healed. We see that, eventually, mortals cannot help but be healed, because healing is the result of the understanding of man's perfection as the reflection of the Mind which is God. The illusory and transitory nature of all discord, and its consequent inability to accomplish anything in the presence of an understanding of Truth, is revealed. In a passage in Science and Health (p. 52) which interprets the mission of Christ Jesus in the divine sunlight of Truth, Mrs. Eddy says: "The 'man of sorrows' best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love."

To be "armed ... with Love," then, which includes the perception of the nothingness of divine Love's so-called opposite, is the great need; and our Father-Mother is continually feeding "the famished affections" to this end. As we realize this blessed fact more fully, we shall rise to the understanding which spontaneously reflects that Love which silently delivers mankind from every ill.

Should we not be more humbly grateful than we are for this daily bread, which is given so freely and abundantly? Is not our every need supplied as we understand that divine Love is our ever present source of supply? With this understanding, can we not take "the manna of to-day"? Then, lifting our eyes to heaven in thanksgiving, we may break and distribute it to earth's hungry ones, knowing that their longings and heartaches will be stilled, even as ours have been.

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