Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread- Dougie Spence

This is my favorite time of the year. The weather cools down, the trees start changing colors, and the holidays are right around the corner. My favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, is approaching very quickly. Most people will debate that Christmas is the best holiday, but I am quite certain that Thanksgiving has them all trumped. No stress about gifts, just family spending time together.

My best memories as a kid involve Thanksgiving. My sister and I used to go to my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Palmdale for the whole week. I loved spending time with my Aunt; she is the type of lady who can spend hours talking to you without any agenda. We would sit and drink coffee all day, the whole time she would give me her full attention as if whatever my teenage mind was thinking was completely important to her. In a way, her making me feel like I had a voice that matters helped shape the man I grew up to be.

My Uncle worked a cool job, but it kept him gone most of the day. By the time he got home all the other kids would be asleep, but I always looked forward to seeing Uncle Bill. He would take the time to teach me about science, cool movies, and always had an opinion on politics. When he got home he would pour me and him glasses of milk and pull out a bag of cookies. Then we would sit and talk for hours. One day every week that I was there he would take me to work with him. He would let me hang out with the other staff members, and they would always show me cool projects that they were working on.

Then thanksgiving would come. The house was always full of family and friends. We would play football, watch football, and just have a fantastic time together. After dinner was done the adults would play poker. The last year we were all together I had a coming of age moment, I was finally fifteen and allowed to play poker with the adults. With a lot of help from my Uncle I was able to do pretty good that night.

When we think about “give us this day our daily bread” we generally think about thanking God for our family and friends, the food He has given us, and the roof over our head. Thanksgiving in most Christian households will spend a moment thanking God for these things.

In John 6 Jesus describes Himself as the Bread of Life.  I think it is extremely important to realize that we need to be asking God for His grace and for His direction every day. We need to ask the Bread of Life to fill our needs in a way that makes man hunger no more. Every day we need to make a conscience effort to abide in the Bread.