“Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread”, a New Perspective From an Old Source

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Songdove Books - Crown HeartIn the past whenever gas got this low, we would make it stretch by walking almost everywhere, from grocery shopping to church etc. It is quite honestly the only downside to living 20 minutes out of town now. We can’t walk to the areas we used to. This morning after my son did his chores, we gathered in the livingroom and discussed what God had been speaking to us about this past week or so.The common theme was centered around trusting God to meet our needs.
My daughter has been quite amused lately reading various passages in the Wycliffe translation of the Bible, and we’d discovered Saturday night, a portion of Matthew 7:11 that isn’t in other translations I’ve come across, not even my favourite KJV. This is the verse we recite of the Lord’s Prayer that says “Give us this day our daily bread”.
Matthew 7:11 Give us this day, our daily bread.
The Wycliffe translation however, says “Give us this day our bread over other sustenance” (rough quote from memory). I found this very interesting and wanted to see if the Greek Interlinear would show if this phrase was actually in there or not. So this morning as we revisited various snippets of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount because it so closely matched the various discussions we were having about trust for daily needs, my daughter opened her phone’s Bible to KJV with Strong’s notations and we found that the Wycliffe translators had chosen another definition of the word commonly translated into “daily” by most translators since then. This definition chosen by Wycliffe for the word “daily” is a derivative of the word that means
that which is needful.
 
Songdove Books - Grape VineThere are so many sources and means of sustenance out there, but not all of them satisfy and many are not needful. God is truly the only One Who can satisfy our actual, legitimate needs every day. By taking this lesser-used derivative, the Wycliffe translation doesn’t merely focus on our daily needs, but on the sustenance that is needful as well. Only God can provide the sustenance that will truly meet our daily needs. There are frivolous means and methods of sustenance, there is sustenance that appears to meet needs on the surface but only leaves one wanting, and there are forms of sustenance that actually cause more harm than good. I could go on rants on each of these types of sustenance, but the point for today, is that God provides that which is needful every day, that which satisfies, that which is for our benefit and His purpose.
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