The Fourth Petition

The subject brought to our attention here seems paltry. It is the bread basket—the necessities of our body and of our life on earth. Brief are the words of our prayer but far-reaching is their import. For when you mention and pray for "daily bread" you pray for everything necessary to the possession and enjoyment of your daily bread; and also you appeal against everything that hinders your obtaining and enjoying it. Therefore, you must indeed arouse and expand your thoughts here, and consider not only the oven and the flour barrel, but also the broad fields and the whole country, which bear and give to us our daily bread and all manner of food. For if God did not cause it to grow, and bless and preserve it in the field, we should never take any bread out of the oven or set any on the table.

In brief, this petition includes all that belongs to our temporal life, since only for its sake we need daily bread. Now, our life requires not only food, clothing and other necessaries, but also concord and peace in our daily business and our dealings and intercourse of every description with the people among whom we live and move, in short, a sound regulation of all domestic and civil or political affairs. For where these two relations are not maintained under the right conditions, the necessaries of life must fail and life itself cannot be supported. And it is, indeed, most necessary to pray for our civil authorities and government, for chiefly through them God provides for our daily bread and every comfort of life. Although we receive from God all good things in abundance, yet we are unable to retain any of them or to enjoy them in safety and happiness unless he gives us a stable and peaceful government. For where dissension, strife and war prevail, there our daily bread is wholly lacking or constantly reduced.

For this reason it would be proper to paint on the coat-of-arms of every pious prince the emblem of a loaf of bread, instead of a lion or a wreath of rue, or to stamp it on the national coins, to remind princes and their subjects that we enjoy protection and peace through their office and without them we could not have the steady blessing of daily bread. Wherefore they are also worthy of all honor, and we should render them the duties we owe, and do all that we can for them, as to those through whom we enjoy in peace and quiet all that we have, inasmuch as otherwise we could not own a penny. Another reason that we should pray for them is that God may bestow upon us, through them, further blessings and treasures.

Let us in the briefest manner show and outline how this petition runs through all interests upon earth. Out of it one might make a long prayer, enumerating with many words all the various things it includes. For instance, to pray God to give us food and drink, clothing, house and home and a sound body; to cause the grain and fruits of the field to grow and flourish; to help us to manage our home affairs properly, and to give and preserve to us godly wives and pious children and servants; to cause our labor, our trade or whatever we do, to prosper and succeed; to give us faithful neighbors and good friends, and the like. Again, to ask God to endow emperors, kings, and all authorities, especially our own princes, counselors, magistrates and officers, with wisdom, strength and ability to govern us well and to triumph over the Turks and all our enemies; to give to their subjects and the people at large obedience, peace and unity among themselves. Also to guard us from everything that may injure our bodies or our means of subsistence; from tempests, hail, fire and flood; from poison, pestilence and plague; from war and bloodshed, famine, savage beasts, wicked people, and other things. It is well to impress upon the people in general that these and like things must be given by God, and must be subjects of prayer with us.

But this petition is especially directed against our supreme foe, the devil. For his only thought and desire is to take from us or injure all that we have received from God; and he is not satisfied to injure and overthrow spiritual order, so that he may lead souls astray and bring them under his power, but he also hinders and defeats the establishment of any kind of government or honorable and peaceful relations upon earth. Hence he causes endless contentions, murders, rebellions and wars; also, tempests and hail to destroy the crops and the cattle; he poisons the air, and does like deeds. In short, it is painful to him that anyone receives a piece of bread from God and enjoys it in peace, and if it were in his power, and God, through our prayers, did not restrain him, we should verily not have a stalk in the field nor a penny in the house, yea, not even our life for an hour; especially those who keep God's Word and endeavor to be Christians.

Notice, God wishes thus to show us how he sympathizes with us in all our need, and how he faithfully provides for our daily existence. Although he gives and provides so bountifully, even for the godless and rogues, yet it is his pleasure that we pray for these blessings and thus learn to acknowledge that we receive them from his hand and therein experience his fatherly goodness toward us. For where he withdraws his hand nothing can attain to prosperity and permanence, as we daily observe and experience to our satisfaction. What a plague base money alone has become in the world, an evil aggravated by those who, in the ordinary sphere of commerce, barter and labor, grieve the poor with their oppression and exactions, thus depriving them of their daily bread. Against this we have no redress; but, as for themselves, let them beware lest they lose the prayer we have in common, and let them take care that this part of the Lord's Prayer be not made their foe.