“Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God…” Daniel 6:10
I set up a lovely joke for the Sunday School kids yesterday, but none of them took the bait. We’ve been working through the Lord’s Prayer lately, balancing the different ideas with stories of prayer from throughout the scriptures. Yesterday, with a nod to thanksgiving, we were on daily bread, which I paired with the story of Daniel and the lions’ den. The ideas was that, despite persecution, Daniel kept up his daily routine of prayer and found courage enough to face each day, whatever the threats that surrounded him. I expected (hoped?) that one of the kids would point out to me that the lions didn’t quite get their daily bread, thanks to angelic intervention, but nobody breathed a word or even cracked a carnivorous smile. Oh well. You can lead a horse to water…
The real work of the morning was a brainstorming session around the ideas of daily bread, so that they could write prayers of thanksgiving to share with the congregation next week during worship. They had two questions to answer: “what is our daily bread?” and “what does God provide?” Purple markers, green crayons, plain and ordinary pencilled letters: God provides health, friends, and happiness. Kindness. Love. The world. Family and food and people. Courage came up on several sheets of paper, likely in response to Daniel’s story, but maybe for other reasons, too. Someone wrote of our daily bread that “it is something nourishing,” which I thought was a beautiful phrase for a child to use.
Afterwards, I wondered what I would have contributed, had the tables been turned. What is our daily bread? And what does God provide?
Daily bread works as a short-hand for the basics we need to keep us alive. Literal bread and water then, but what else? Company? Calm? Endurance? I need patience. Does that count? I need strength and love enough to keep myself and my family going. I need time.
And what does God provide? All of the above? Something else? Is this a balanced equation? Daily Bread = what God provides? Or might there be more to see, if I look closely?
Maybe that’s what comes with thanksgiving. When I can pause to tally up the good, to really count and celebrate the blessings around us, I can see that there is far more in the basket after all.
I begin to suspect that we aren’t given just our daily bread. We are given abundance.
Not just breath, but the breath of God.
Often, it can feel like we’re just about provided for. Like the rent is covered and the grocery bill will be fine as long as we eat peanut butter, rice and sardines. But really, there’s more. God provides baskets and baskets besides. God provides all that we need to live, not just what we need to survive. 
The lions may roar, but we can trust that God works all things to the good and that we might have life abundant. So roar back and know that God provides.
Happy Thanksgiving Monday, my friends.
