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God, I Need a Parking Spot

My wife and I are reading a book together called “Praying like Monks, Living Like Fools.”

As one can probably guess, it's a book about prayer.

In the book the author describes the story of his stepmom pulling into a crowded parking lot, and praying for a parking spot. The author remarked how ridiculous it felt given all the needs of suffering people in the world, that a well-off suburban mom should dare to ask the God of the universe for a parking spot.

And yet she did.

And she was immediately given a parking spot.

And she thanked God for it.

Daily Bread

The chapter in the book was about asking for our daily bread.

If you have been a Christian long enough, the term daily bread has probably lost a bit of its meaning for you. We hear it and it goes in one ear and out through the other. But the way it was described in this book really shed new light on what it meant to ask for our daily bread. One quote in particular stood out:

“We trust God in the ultimate sense, meaning we know that in the end He will work all things for good, but we often fail to trust Him in our daily experience, we fail to ask for the small things because we are afraid he will disappoint, or just does not care.”  (Paraphrase)

We are afraid He will disappoint. We don’t trust Him in the little things.

For the small things

But yet when Jesus taught His disciples to pray He did not just tell them to ask for Gods will to be done on earth as in heaven, he also said to ask for the daily bread.

For the small, specific little things that make up most of our everyday lived experiences.

For the decision that needs to be made at work or school, for the parking spot at the mall, for the daily bread.

Of course, God is not a genie, and should not be treated as such. But I think that it is possible we have so conditioned with the thought of “God is not a vending machine” that we have stopped asking for little things in faith.

I am not promising that God will answer everytime, or that He will always supply every need.

There is a great little article on that if you interested. But He does want us to — even commands us to — ask. Ask. For the big and the small. 

That God’s will would be done on earth, and that He would provide our daily bread.

Until next time,

Be Blessed,

Aaron

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