Give us this day our weekly bread…

I love my friend’s translation of this phrase from the Lord’s prayer. “Surprise us today with what we need.” Surprise me… I often say that at restaurants and other times when I’m offered two or more good options and it really doesn’t matter much which one. Strawberry cream pie or chocolate cake? Surprise me. House dressing or Italian. Surprise me. Guinness or … that’s taking things too far. Say no more. Guinness please. I do love the surprise though as much or more than I love getting exactly what i want….

But here’s the deal, the real deal… the Kevin bearing his soul a bit deal. I’ve been saying in regard to my business, the panel shop as they call them in New Zealand (hey Fromont!), that I’d love to hold onto it and that it would be a passive income stream down the road and if i could just grow it to a certain point it would support me with minimal demands on me etc. The idea of being bi-vocational (a flawed term I need to wrestle with in another post) is that the income stream shold be a means to an end. Paul made tents when he needed to for financial or strategic reasons. Strategic reasons by the way included things like identifying with other people who worked his trade or another trade or to demonstrate for the lazy that work is one of God’s means of provision. But making tents was always subservient to his higher call, his mission to proclaim truth to Gentiles and start churches. For me it has felt like too much attention and energy and time and resources have gone into the “means” and I’m not really seeing the “ends” or for that matter, the “end” of working the “means.” All that to say perhaps i need a gut check re: my thinkng my stance toward my business. I do not want it to consume me and owning a business can be consuming. i do not want it to enslave me. I’m working so that i will have resources and freedom to pursue that ‘higher call.’ And (to get to the point of this post and tie it back into the daily bread idea) I do not need it as a security for my future. i have God for that and he is God who provides daily bread, a God who surprises us with what we need for each day and does not require us to secure our own future. All the worry I’ve done regarding provision in the past seems slightly rediculous in the light of the fact that i have never missed a meal or gone a day without clothing or spent the night on the street… that begs the question: What about those who have? That will take another post… all i can do for now is speak out of my personal experience and say “Thanks for the daily bread!”