Our Daily Bread

I’ve grown up always hearing and reciting The Lord’s Prayer in church, small groups, and before meals. I never truly understood the weight and the meaning of The Lord’s Prayer until recently. Of course it has always been important, it is the model that Jesus gave us to pray! It just became so normal and repetitive to me that I failed to notice how much good and truth is in it. 

Each week we have a Faith at Work speaker where someone from the Greensboro community comes and speaks to the Fellows about how the Lord has guided their career path. A few weeks ago we heard from Tripp Grazziano, literally the guy who started Greensboro Fellows! Thank God for him! When Tripp came, he gave us “10 Ideas to Live By”. One of these was to seriously and constantly ask for God to “Give us this day our daily bread…” 

As a Fellow, it can be easy to get caught up in praying and thinking about the question: “What’s next?” Many of us Fellows are truly praying and wrestling through with God what is to come after Fellows. However, Tripp challenged us to stop praying so much about the future and to start praying about the PRESENT. In The Lord’s Prayer we don’t pray for bread for tomorrow or the next month or the next year or the next 5 years. We pray for bread for TODAY! We tend to focus so much on what is to come that we miss out on what God is trying to reveal to us in the present. If we take the time to pay attention to what God is showing us today, just maybe He is also showing us what is to come. This really hit home for me and the other Fellows. 

Since Tripp shared this wisdom, I have started praying each day for my daily bread rather than just bread for the days to come. In doing this, I have better been able to keep my eyes open to what God is doing daily and live in the new mercies that I am given each morning. I have seen God’s blessing all over my days because I am more focused on what is going on right in front of me. Here’s a few moments I’ve really seen God in recently: going to the NEEDTOBREATHE concert with Allison, drinking tea with Madison, sitting around a bonfire at The Homestead, watching Ana and Tatum make dinner, and even in driving Mary to the airport at 6 in the morning haha. God has truly opened my heart and mind to enjoying and praying for the present moment more than worrying about my future.

With so much love,

Maddie Ridgill