Dear one,
“Give us today our daily bread …”
For years I have regularly offered these words with undoubted sincerity; and yet, at some moment somewhere in my thinking was the tacit admission: “Truthfully, I am little concerned about my next meal.” However, when Jesus encouraged His first disciples to pray (i.e. Matthew 6:9-13 or “Lord’s Prayer”), He addressed those who lived at or below subsistence. Theirs was a world wherein the elite, who ate at tables of bounty, constituted 1-2% of the population;[1] whereas not infrequently the vast majority knew the reality of hunger and starvation. For them, to utter: “I’m starving” did not mean: “I need a mid-afternoon snack to tide-me-over until dinner.”
Given that you and I live in a land of bounty—even in these covid days—my intent here is not elicit feelings of guilt; rather I would note that in His prayer of five verses, nine times Jesus employed the little, first-person pronoun (i.e. we, our, us), which prompts me to ask: Who is this “we/our/us”? As I’ve already suggested, this “we” reflected His first disciples, a greatly impoverished people, who eked out a livelihood from tempest-tossed waters and/or from fields of stone beneath an unrelenting sun.
If so, and if you’ll allow a very narrow view, this “we” became His church, which today numbers approximately 31% of the world’s population, or approximately 2.3billion people. Of those billions, approximately 631million live in Africa; approximately 364million in Asia; and approximately 381million in South America. That means, approximately 1.375billion disciples of Christ live in lands, where starvation, hunger, and malnutrition are often epidemic, regardless the impact of the coronavirus.
Now I recognize that one might counter: “But how many of these are truly following Christ?”—but of course that really isn’t the question I’d have us address. No, the question I faced earlier this week came as I spoke with a Korean missionary/ theology student living in Manila. In our conversation he expressed a deep concern for believers suffering in China, Somalia, and Nigeria—for whom he prays daily; and for me, his heartfelt concern, compelled me to ask: Stan, how big is your view of the church? How big is your view of our world? And most importantly, how big is your view of our Lord, Creator of heaven and earth? Do you pray that you might enter into His world; or, do you pray that He might enter your bubble, in order to keep you safe?
Praying beyond,
Stan
[1] Americans constitute 4.25% of world population.