Food and Forgiveness
John Fischer

Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins… (Matthew 6:11-12 NLT)

I have an Irish friend that I call every Saint Patrick’s Day and this year was no exception. He is truly Irish, having been born in Ireland, and he has managed to hold onto his thick Irish brogue in spite of being in this country since the 1960s. And did I mention his name was Patrick? That is probably why I always remember to call him. I don’t know much about the real Saint Patrick, but this Patrick has been a saint to me for as long as I’ve known him, which is about 35 years. (How about that, Patrick?) He’s a dear brother with a huge heart, a boundless gift of service and an old country genteel nature that is rare in America. We shared a house together back in my single days; now we’re 500 miles apart, though we always connect at least on March 17 because that’s Saint Patrick’s Day — my friend Patrick, the saint, that is.

When I asked him how his year had been, he told me he had been praying the Lord’s Prayer a lot this year. I acted impressed, and then he corrected me. “It’s no big deal; I’ve been praying the shortened version.”

“Oh?” I had never heard of the shortened version, although I knew the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Luke is shorter than the one in Matthew. I initially assumed that’s what he meant. “What’s that?”

“Food and forgiveness,” he said. There was a long pause.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Well, it’s got other stuff in it, but when it comes down to what’s truly practical — what I need every day — it’s food and forgiveness. Just the basics.”

I think he may be onto something here. Food is basic to our human existence; we can’t stay alive without food. Forgiveness is basic to our spiritual existence; we can’t stay spiritually alive without forgiveness.

Now no one can argue the daily necessity of food, but some might argue the daily necessity of forgiveness, because daily forgiveness assumes daily sin, and some Christians like to think that sin is in the past, kind of like Mark McGuire’s steroid use. But sin goes on. We — our spirits in fact — are housed in a body of sin (2 Corinthians 4:11). Sin’s influence is constant and not always fully detected by us. That’s why Paul refuses to even judge himself because he doesn’t fully know his own heart (1 Corinthians 4:3-4). Thank God we have forgiveness for even that which we can’t confess, because we can’t see it yet.

So maybe you need the shortened version of the Lord’s Prayer today. Of course the rest of it needs to not be neglected — praise, protection from temptation, deliverance from evil, and praying for the coming kingdom — but sometimes it just comes down to what we really need: food and forgiveness.

PDL