‘Give us our daily bread’ is the only materialistic prayer phrase that we have in the Lord’s Prayer. The god who gave us mouths to eat, and stomachs that feel hunger will also provide food for the mouth and stomach. Multiple times God has provided food for his people. In Exodus 16 we find God providing manna for his people when they were hungry. In the gospels too there are many instances of Jesus, moved with compassion, provides bread for the hungry multitude (Matthew 14: 13-21).
If our God is a provider of bread for the hungry, we, his followers, must also become providers of bread for the hungry. We must have the courage to look around and see others need. One sitting close to us to one staying the next house to the people struck in natural calamities, like the Wayanad landslides. This capacity to look around and see people in need is what we call as a horizontal life.
Every individual in the large crowd perhaps was thinking how will I get my bread? The child who had 5 loaves must have been thinking how will preserve the rest for tomorrow. The disciples must have been thinking once we send these people away we can go and have some food. All were thinking vertically only about themselves. Jesus made them to look around, think horizontally; so the question, “what do you have to feed the people?”
Giving starts when we begin to have a fellow feeling for the other. The root word for compassion is compassio meaning, fellow feeling. The first step to live horizontally is to see others who are in need. Miracles will follow.
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