Daily Bread

Bikes are an essential part of life here on Kwaj as a car is an essential part of life in the States. With the highly corrosive environment here (think tons of rust) bikes are always breaking and needing repairs. Everybody’s who has been here long enough has a bike with lots of random parts and many have bungee cords holding things together. They say that a new bike will last a year out here with no maintenance. With regular maintenance they last a year and day. Needless to say bikes break down regularly and most folks have a spare bike since it is hard to get parts and make the fixes in a timely fashion.

Kim and I had a spare bike that we “gave/loaned”  to some really good friends of ours since he was waiting for a new fork which is hard to get for the frame he had. Since we are moving soon we figured no big deal. Unfortunately my bike went down (broken bottom bracket) and it was so rusted that a fix was impossible. That left us in a little bit or a lurch since we didn’t want to buy a bike and didn’t want to leave our friends high and dry.

Our other neighbor had wanted to buy his wife a new bike for awhile and when he found out we were in a pinch he bought his wife a new bike and loaned us her old one until we move. As I rode the borrowed bike to work it reminded me of how God has answered my prayer for daily bread. I find that it is easy to take for granted the many and varied ways God moves in response to this simple request for daily bread. This gift of a borrowed bike was a way God opened my eyes to see the vastness of daily bread being given each and every day. It awoke within me praise, thankfulness, contentment and confidence in the future.

There are so many things that need to be put together for an international move and each one of those will be a form of daily bread and God who has provided the bread in the past will be the God who will provide the bread in the future. It also reminded me that we are called to be part of bring daily bread to the world as we share our resources with those who have less than we do. In this way we are used by God as an answer to prayer as my neighbor was used by God for my daily bread.

In what ways has God given you daily bread and how might you be called to be an answer to someone's prayer for daily bread?