hungry every morning

I'll admit, I've been avoiding this blog, avoiding sitting long enough to think. I figured if I did, I could ignore whatever is going on in my head and my heart. But as I learn again and again, the way I process is through writing, and without it, I become a restless jumbled up mess.

Here's one thing I've been processing:

A month-long conflict that I've had with someone close to me ended on a good note recently and initially, all I could think was, "Wait, that's it? It's over just like that?" How could something so intensely difficult for what feels like months come to an end in a matter of 24 hours?

Throughout the conflict, I begged daily for God's peace, but it never came. I held out hope that eventually it would come before the end, that God was doing something I couldn't understand and He would give me His peace when the time was right -- and then suddenly the conflict was over, and it was "too late" for that peace to come in the midst of conflict. Why? Doesn't He promise peace? Doesn't it not count if it comes once the conflict is over because then there are multiple variables involved?

But looking back, I do remember small moments of peace; they came every now and then. I failed to see them because I expected this long, drawn-out peace throughout it all. But had that happened, would I have begged for it daily?

This past Sunday at church, the pastor took apart the Lord's prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). For the line, "Give us our daily bread," he highlighted that Jesus says our daily bread, not our monthly bread, not our yearly bread. Our daily bread. 

He explained the importance of this by using an example of him and his son. Every morning, his young son crawls onto his (the father's) bed, pokes him repeatedly in the face and asks, "Can we go downstairs? I'm hungry." Can you imagine if the son came to his father once a month, or once a year, to ask for food? The son wouldn't need the father all the other days!

God will never let us get to the point where we don't need Him. We need to live in dependency on Him from day to day. He provides from day to day. Even if it's only in small portions.

Those small moments of peace were obviously enough to get me through the day, because I'm here now. Those small moments and the lack of the big moments kept me coming to Him every morning.

"Father, will You feed me this morning? I'm hungry."