All this we say that we believe when we pray this prayer.
How much it conflicts with our modern habit of putting God as far away from daily life as we can!
The prayer is the consecration of our work for bread.
The indirect way by which it is answered is a great blessing, and it pledges us to labour.
Orare est laborare. Not, as it is sometimes quoted, as if toil was to do instead of prayer, but that active life may be consecrated to God, and all our efforts which terminate in gaining bread for ourselves and for those we love may become prayer, and be offered to God.
How can we pray for God to give us our daily bread, and then go to seek it by means which we dare not avow or defend in our prayers? Bless my cheating, bless my sharp practice, bless my half-heartedness. It is no part of my business to apply principles to details of conduct, but it is my business to say—take this prayer for a test, and if you dare not pray it over what you do in earning your living, ask yourself whether you are not rather earning your death.
Then the prayer is a pledge of thankful recognition of God in our blessings.
Ah! dear friends, are we not all guilty in this? How utterly heathenish is our oblivion of God in our daily life! How far we have come from that temper which recognises Him in all joys, and begins every new day with Him! Daily mercies demand daily songs of praise. His love wakens us morning by morning. It follows us all the day long with its fatherly benefits. It reveals itself anew every time He spreads our table, every time He gives us teaching or joy. And our thanksgiving and consciousness of His presence should be as constant as are His gifts. 'My voice shalt thou hear in the morning.' 'They walk all the day long in the light of Thy countenance.' 'I will both lay me down in peace and sleep.' 'They ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.'
II. The union with our brethren in our prayer.
'Give us.' The struggle for existence is represented by many as the very law of human life. The fight for bread is the great antagonist of brotherly regard for our fellows. Trade is said to be warfare; and then others starting from that conception that one man's gains are some other man's losses, proclaim with undoubted truth on these premises 'property is robbery.' But surely this clause of our prayer teaches us a more excellent way. We are not to be like stiff-necked men who fight with one another for the drop of brackish water caught in the corner of a sail, but we are to be as children bowing down together before a great Father, all sitting at His table where nothing wants, and where even the pet dogs below it eat of the crumbs.