I love bread. Especially, the apple scrapple from the Great Harvest Bakery. The chewy goodness of baked white bread (whole wheat doesn’t do it for me) mixed with apple and cinnamon. I eat it in great chunks on the way home from the store. Handfuls ripped right off the loaf, crumbs falling all over the front seat of my new car. I choose hunks preferentially by their endowment with cinnamon and brown sugar topping. When THAT drops on the floor it is tragic!

But I’m not a bread snob. Most any loaf will do. It was probably me they had in mind when they came out with the low carb diets. Take out the carbs and all my eating pleasure vanishes, too. Instant weight loss!

So it won’t surprise you that when I say the Lord’s prayer – and do the Lord’s prayer stretch  – I extend my hands with palms cupped and imagine my daily bread in them. “Give us this day our daily bread.” My hands are empty. But if there were bread placed there, as I imagine, how heavy is it? How heavy should it be? How heavy would I like it to be?

I want lots. Plenty for my carb-loaded lifestyle. Gimme. Gimme. A whole loaf of apple scrapple, please. Fill me up, Lord!

But God, knowing what my day holds, gives me what I need for the day. Only so much and no more. And in that is an irony: the more He gives me, the more of Him I am gonna need to get through the day. I should be asking for less. Crumbs, Lord. Please give me crumbs!

Isn’t it funny? We’re carrying around basket fulls of bread and calling ourselves lucky. Even blessed. When what God is saying in His portion is, “you’re gonna need a lot of me, today.” Go ahead, you’re strong. You’ll need THIS!

What if I held out my hands and God put in just a bit? And, instead of complaining at my meager rations, I said, “Thank you, Lord, for giving me just what I need. Thank you for bearing the weight of this day.”

Perhaps I am weak and can only carry a small bit. Or, maybe, as I learn to trust Him to prepare me for what’s ahead, I better rely on my God-inspired experiences and God-given resources and God-endowed creativity, and trust that it will be nearly sufficient for today. His contribution is simply topping, brown sugar and cinnamon on the me-loaf He has brought to this day.

As I grow older and wiser in Him, will my daily portion diminish? Will my demand on His resources be less and less? Will I be satisfied with just a small piece, broken from the loaf and placed in my hands? Communion-sized.

His body, broken for me. This, I should not enjoy by the handful. But I do. I don’t even bother to collect the crumbs.