To Your Daily Bread

Q. What is the fourth petition? 

A. Give us this day our daily bread. 

That is: 

Provide us with all our bodily needs 

• We ask the Lord to give us our daily bread because these things are really firmly and ultimately in his hand. 

So that we may acknowledge that You are the only fountain of all good, 

• Bread is a product of nature, yet it does not come from nature, nor from the creature, but from the Creator. 

And that our care and labor, and also Your gifts, cannot do us any good without Your blessing. 

• Care here is not "worries" or "anxieties" but careful and thoughtful attention to our calling. 

Grant, therefore, that we may withdraw our trust from all creatures and place it only in You.

• We must not place our confidence and hope in luck or chance or other creatures, nor in ourselves, but only in the Lord our God.

For the Bible Tells Me So...

Psalm 145:15,16 -- The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. 

Proverbs 30:8 -- Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me. 

Matthew 6:25, 33 -- I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink ... but seek first His Kingdom ... and all these things will be yours as well. 

James 1:17 -- Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

The Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 50