Lord’s Prayer: Our Daily Bread

Chapter 7

Our daily bread…

(Gathering Our Inheritance)

Knowing that we can claim ownership of our inheritance in the living hour is one thing. But what are we supposed to do with that knowledge? The childhood keys of wonderment and immediacy help unlock the door to the kingdom of heaven, but they don’t have the power to usher us across the threshold. To cross into the kingdom and gather our inheritance, we have to move beyond the carefree world of the child and into the care-driven world of adults—to expand our concerns beyond the “me” to include the “us”.

We can begin by recognizing that although the spontaneity of the child and the adult are similar, they are not one and the same. Take for example the miracles that Jesus performs in the Gospels. If we can set aside the unanswerable question of whether or not these miracles actually occurred, we can begin to see the miracle stories as parables of spontaneity, ones which teach us that living in Christ means immediately responding to the needs of others. Whether it is healing the sick,¹ walking on water,² or turning water into wine,³ Jesus never hesitates but responds spontaneously and confidently to those who call out to him.

Spontaneous charity is taught also by the story of the Good Samaritan.⁴ In this well–known parable a man gets robbed and beaten while on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho. A priest and a local man pass by him as he lies half–dead on the road. Finally a stranger from Samaria stops, tends to his wounds, and takes him to an inn to recuperate, paying the man’s bills—all without giving his actions a second thought.

The genuine caring shown by the Good Samaritan sheds light on Jesus’s enigmatic teaching: “When you do acts of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charity may be secret; and your Father, who sees what is in secret, will recompense you.”⁵ By performing our acts of charity spontaneously like the Samaritan, we keep them secret from our egos (that part of us which wants to debate whether we have the time, money, or energy to respond to others in need), and we allow our Christ consciousness to rise (that part of us which recognizes that when others suffer we suffer too). Our charity is thus driven by nothing except a true generosity of spirit.

Jesus encourages us to bring that same spirit to our acts of fellowship. The generosity of Christ is shown by welcoming all the members of our community to our table—the good and the bad, the funny and the dull, the smart and the annoying. Look at the way Jesus accepted twelve very flawed apostles as his intimates. That he took in Judas (knowing full well that he would betray him) and never gave up on the poor, clueless, and overzealous Peter should be a lesson to us all. Furthermore, we are told how Jesus regularly sat down to eat and drink with his neighbors,⁶ regardless of how “righteous” they might be or what other people thought—so much so that he was unfairly labeled a glutton and a wino.⁷

Never has Jesus’s gospel of fellowship and acceptance had more…

The Lord’s Prayer. To continue reading, click on page 2 at the bottom.

1. “Sir,” he said, “my servant is lying ill at my house with a stroke of paralysis, and is suffering terribly.” 7 “I will come and cure him,” answered Jesus. – Matthew 8:6–7 [↩]
2. When evening fell, the boat was out in the middle of the sea, and Jesus on the shore alone. 48 Seeing them laboring at the oars—for the wind was against them—about three hours after midnight Jesus came towards them, walking on the water, intending to join them. – Mark 6:47–48 [↩]
3. Jesus said to the servants: “Fill the water-jars with water;” 8 And, when they had filled them to the brim, he added: “Now take some out, and carry it to the master of the feast.” The servants did so. 9 And, when the master of the feast had tasted the water which had now become wine, not knowing where it had come from—although the servants who had taken out the water knew—10 He called the bridegroom and said to him: “Everyone puts good wine on the table first, and inferior wine afterwards, when his guests have drunk freely; but you have kept back the good wine till now!” – John 2:6–10 [↩]
4. A man was once going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him of everything, and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31 As it chanced, a priest was going down by that road. He saw the man, but passed by on the opposite side. 32 A Levite, too, did the same; he came up to the spot, but, when he saw the man, passed by on the opposite side. 33 But a Samaritan, traveling that way, came upon the man, and, when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, dressing them with oil and wine, and then put him on his own mule, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out four shillings and gave them to the inn-keeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he said, ‘and whatever more you may spend I will myself repay you on my way back.’ – Luke 10: 30–35 [↩]
5. Matthew 6:3–4 [↩]
6. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law found fault. “This man always welcomes sinners, and takes meals with them!” they complained. – Luke 15:2 [↩]
7. And now that the Son of Man has come, eating and drinking, they are saying: ‘Here is a glutton and a wino, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!’ Matthew 11:19 [↩]

On the Road with Jack Kerouac – God is Pooh Bear

Towards the very end of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel On the Road, he writes several memorable lines, which he read famously on The Steve Allen Show in 1956. One passage is as follows:

“In Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh-Bear?…

The comment that God is Pooh-Bear has caused a lot of confusion over the years, with many people claiming that Kerouac thinks that God is a fiction. But to believe that Jack Kerouac felt that God was a figment of our imaginations is to terribly misread him. The so called “King of the Beats” felt God intensely, within each and every hobo, wino, and hard-luck soul he met.

Kerouac defined being “beat” as being reduced to the essentials. But what does that really mean? And why was Kerouac so attracted to people who were beat? Those who have read Benjamin Hoff’s Tao of Pooh probably have an intimation of the answer. In Hoff’s book we learn how Winnie the Pooh is symbolic of the sage who lives in the immediate moment.

When we are reduced to the essentials (beat) we have no choice but to live inside the immediate moment, and thus are close to God, as is revealed by Jesus’s parables of spontaneity. Close to God, though, does not translate to Being with God. For that to occur we must let charity, patience, and love drive our actions rather than the demands of the ego.

We must throw ourselves into the spontaneity of Christ (our true selves), as so often Pooh does in service to his friends and neighbors, without ever giving it a second thought.

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Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

To read about William Butler Yeats and Christ’s Second Coming please go to: Jesus’s Second Coming.