We sometimes hear it said that we have only a right to ask God for such gifts as holiness and conformity to His will. This has a truth, a great truth, in it. But it may be overstrained. We are to subdue our wishes, we are to be more anxious for our soul's health than for our bodily wants. We are to present our desires concerning all things in this life, with an implied 'if it be Thy will,' but while all that is true, we are also to ask Him for these lower blessings. Our prayers should include all which we desire, all which we need. Our desires should be such as we can turn into prayers. If we dare not ask God for a thing, do not let us seek for it. But whatever we do want, let us go to Him for it, and be sure that He does not wish lip homage and fine-sounding petitions for things for which we do not really care, but that He does desire that we should be frank with Him, making a prayer of every wish, and seeing that we have neither wishes which we dare not make prayers, nor prayers which are not really wishes. Let our supplications cover all the ground of our daily wants, and be true to our own souls. If any man lack anything, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men life and breath and all things.
Then still further—the prayer is the recognition of God as the Giver of daily bread.
'Thou openest Thine hand,' says the old psalm, 'and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' There is no part of the divine dealings of which the Bible speaks more frequently and more lovingly than His supply of all creatures' wants. It is a grand thought, 'Who feedeth the young ravens when they cry, who maketh the grass to grow on the mountains. The eyes of all wait upon Thee.' There is a magnificent verse in the 104th Psalm, which regards even the roar of the lion prowling for its prey in midnight forests as a cry to God—'The young lions seek their meat from God.' As Luther says somewhere in his rough prose—'Even to feed the sparrows God spends more than the revenues of the French king would buy.' And that universal bounty applies truly to those whose lot is 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.' For us it is true. God feeds us. 'Thou givest meat to them that fear Thee, Thou wilt ever be mindful of Thy covenant.' In giving us our daily bread, His hand is hid under second causes, but these should not mask the truth from us.
God is the life of nature. His will is the power whose orderly working we call nature's laws. Force is the sign manual of God. There would be no harvest, no growth, unless to each seed God gave a body as it hath pleased Him. The existence of bread is the effect of His work. 'He hath not left Himself without witness in that He giveth rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.' as Paul said to the rough farmer folk of Lycaonia.
The distribution of the bread is of God.
By second causes, our work and other means.
Be it so. Here is a steam engine, in one room away at one end of your mill; here is a spindle whirring five hundred yards off. What then? Who thinks that that bit of belting moves the drum round which it turns, or that the cog-wheel that carries the motion originates it? The motion here has force at the other end, the effect here has its cause in God.
The nourishment by bread is of God.
'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'
The reason why any natural substance has properties is by reason of present will of God; they reside not in itself, but in Him.