In my last post: Saved by Good Works I quoted John 4:32-34.

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.”

As I contemplated this verse it led me to think about the line in the Lord’s prayer: give us this day our daily bread.

I don’t want to take away from the main meaning of this request. We can and should consciously entrust our our physical sustenance to Our Father in Heaven…

However, I can’t now help finding it a prompt to ask God for all that I need to do his will today, to serve him joyfully in the works he has prepared for me to do in advance.

As some of you may remember – last year I spent quite a lot of time pondering what Jesus said about the woman who annointed him at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany.

“She did what she could.” Mark 14: 8

It is not our job to get everything done every day. To extravagantly love everyone we know and everyone else as well. We might never reach the bottom of the laundry basket or the end of the to do list. We may have forgotten things and left to tomorrow what could have been done today. And yet we may have done what we could.

I’m not sure how helpful it is to constantly ask ourselves if we have done what we could, but I do think it is a wonderful thing to entrust to the Lord each day. In one sense God’s to-do list for us is only ever a day long!

As I have written of previously – prayer for my daily bread has also become a prompt to ask God to help me to do what I can each day. To ask him to help me spot the jar of nard that needs to be smashed extravagantly today, and not to hesitate when the moment comes. To ask him to lead me in the best way to love Jesus with a costly passionate love today. I ask him to help me to faithfully carry out the works he has prepared for me today with the resources he has given me today, to spot the important and not neglect it, while carrying out the necessary cheerfully.

In God’s kindness I have found that these thoughts have taken really taken root in my daily habits over the past year and I am excited by the addition of this ‘John 4’ facet to further enrich them:

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.”

Our daily soul bread is to do the will of the Father – how wonderful to daily entrust our souls and bodies to his provision of all that we need to sustain is.

For the kingdom, the power and the glory are his, for ever and ever Amen!