Daily Bread

It's been two weeks since the inception of my Publix experiment. Since then, I've been to the grocery store once, and that was only to buy food for my life group this past Sunday. I have plenty of food in the house, so I'm planning to extend the experiment indefinitely, to see just how long I can go before I truly need to do a "big" grocery store run. Hopefully my days of running to the store every week are over.

My desire to spend less time and money at the grocery store is part of a more far-reaching conviction that I've felt lately from the Lord's Prayer, specifically the part about "Give us this day our daily bread." It seems like an inoccuous line at first, until you really take a closer look at it.

Christ wasn't just giving us an example of asking for food--truth be told, I don't live day-to-day wondering where my next meal is going to come from. I think His point was that every hunger (whether hunger for food or hunger for love or hunger for peace and quiet) should be fulfilled only by God. And that requires a daily renewal to seek His favor.

I have a hard time not wanting "more" out of life--more clothes, more shoes, more chocolate, more books to read, more time. None of these things are bad in and of themselves. But too often, I convince myself that I need "more" instead of being content with and enjoying what I already have. I want to approach God daily and ask for what I need for that day, not worrying about tomorrow or next week or next month.

Does that mean that I don't need to buy a 64-roll pack of toilet paper from Sam's? Maybe it does, I don't know. On a deeper level, I do think that it means that I don't strain myself trying to get more of something. When I rely on God to give me exactly what I need when I need it, I experience much more peace, much less striving and worry about the future.

So my decision to eat the contents of my pantry rather than make another run to Publix stems from a challenge to enjoy what I already have and not rush after something else. I'm trying to extend this concept to all areas of my life, but grocery shopping seems like a good place to start.