THE LORD'S PRAYER
AND
THE CREATION WEEK
By The Rev. Erik Sandstr m, Sr.
(Lesson 6)
6. Our Daily Bread
There may be gratitude to the
Lord without the constant expression thereof by word of mouth, and also genuine
trust in His provisions without much repetition before Him of our needs. Little
children who have their daily food, their clothing, their homes and beds, do not
always say, thank you, for these things, even if taught to do so when they
receive special favors; nor are they much worried about the morrow. Yet they
always feel their dependence upon their parents, and they look to them with
unreasoning trust to provide the next meal, the new garment, and so on. So it is
also with those who do love the Lord. They think and act from that love
perpetually, even when their conscious thought is captivated by the use they are
performing, the book they are reading, or the conversation in which they are
engaged. They do so because their thought and action, whatever external form
they may take, are in the sphere of that love, and spring from it as their
inmost motive. Hence they are grateful for the past and the present, and
confident as to the future. This is so in the regenerate state.
The risk, however, is that we
are neither grateful nor confident, but have slipped into an attitude of mind in
which we take for granted the things that are constantly given. Children, of
themselves, feel no real gratitude, although they may be instructed about that
virtue and introduced into a habit of expressing it; and there is with them much
more thoughtlessness than genuine trust in regard to things to come. Of
themselves all children are selfish. Yet their ignorance and their dependence on
others attract to them an atmosphere of innocence which makes them lovable at
the time and prepares for their internal development in the future. But if
people in their mature age do not grow from the innocence of ignorance into the
innocence of wisdom, then they will have none; for their ignorance has been
replaced by knowledge, a knowledge that waits for its counterpart.
How are we to achieve the state
in which we are interiorly and perpetually aware of the mercies of the Lord,
past, present, and future? the state in which we cooperate constantly with the
ends of mercy, without ascribing the least of merit to ourselves. It cannot be
done without repentance. Repentance removes the inborn attitudes of self-concern
and materialistic love which obstruct the flow of internal things. In the
internals of the mind all things have been set in order by providential leading
throughout the years that precede maturity. There has been an assembling of knowledges, although the interior aspect of every bit of knowledge is inimical
to the self that eagerly acquires its storehouse of information; and all outward
show of obedience and charity has been caught up by the billowing affections
from heaven, and stored away for future use in the interiors of the natural
mind. Thus there has been a constant refashioning there and a gradual
regeneration. The hands and the head have been cleansed. Conscience has been
formed, and is working with increasing and disturbing insistence into the plane
below. But that plane the feet has yet to be washed.
Before repentance we can indeed
say, Give us this day our daily bread. But we cannot say it with internal
gratitude and implicit trust; nor can we prevent our hearts from clinging to the
bread of the body as we say it. Our daily bread is for our physical needs, too;
but the enlightened and humble spirit desires food, clothing and shelter, not as
ends, but as means. For he scoffs at the idea of the body, his mortal covering,
as being the supreme object of life s benefits, and regards such an attitude as
a vile degradation of the truly human element with man. He knows, not only from
instruction but also from perception, that the body as such is not unlike that
of an animal, and that, by itself, it has animal appetites. It is to be called
human only because of the human soul that impels it. What, then, if that soul
rejects its God-given destiny, and begins to crawl like a serpent on the ground?
A child prays in innocence for
worldly bread, although his mind is as yet not purified and lifted up; but the
adult does not pray for it in innocence unless his mind has been so altered. And
the innocence of the adult is marked by his hunger and thirst for the truly
human things of life, and by his interest in the animal things of his existence
merely as subservient to those which are human.
This is why the sun and the
moon of heaven, shining through the internal things of the mind, do not appear
until the fourth day of creation, after the springing forth of the tender
firstfruits of repentance from the ground of the mind; and why the humble prayer
for our daily bread can have no other place than immediately after the petition:
Thy will be done, as in heaven so upon the earth. We shall have no bread of
heaven unless our earth is prepared to receive it.
So the inside story of the
prayer for bread is that it does not come into its own until it is seen to
express the hunger and thirst of the natural mind for righteousness. The
spiritual vacuum after repentance is the cause of this hunger and thirst.
Moreover, let us keep in mind that the better things of life cannot flow into
the lower parts of the mind unless they are as it were invited to do so. For the
universal law is that influx is according to reception. If it were not so, the
interior things. by virtue of their greater power, could never be rejected. They
would force reception wherever they appeared. But then, of course, the word
freedom would disappear from human language. Seen in this way, the fourth
petition yields as its meaning this cry: Feed us with the affection of heaven:
or deeper still; Feed us with Thine own life; for the Divine life proceeds to
man as veiled and accommodated by angelic affections. It is these living things,
in which is the Lord, that are the actual nourishment: for the soul or mind.
Therefore the Lord called Himself the living bread that cometh down from
heaven, to give life unto the world.
The Writings give as spiritual
meanings of bread the following: the good of celestial life (AC 8410); the good
of truth, which is the good of the spiritual church (AC 8432); the Word, from
which there is spiritual nourishment (AE 617: 17); Divine good proceeding (AE
617: 20); and, in general, the affection of all good (HH 111: 2). These
explanations, although varying according to the context, are all one: for if it
is said, the Word, or, the Divine good that is within the Word and flows in by
means of it, it amounts to the same thing. The Word, of course, is a living
thing. It is the Divine life clothed in the vesture of Divine light. It is
present throughout the universe, and is conveyed to human minds by means of
influx through heaven. Externally there are the written statements of the Word,
which, if revered and pondered and obeyed, become the receptacles of the influx
into the mind. But the external statements and the Divine life within them
should not be regarded apart from one another, for they are as the body and soul
of the Word and they make one.
The universal idea, therefore,
is that it is the affection of what is good and true that feeds the mind. This
is seen to be so if we reflect that nothing is received into the mind unless
there is some affection for it. We are simply not conscious apart from
affection. There are many sides to this matter. But let us attend first to the
circumstance that we always feel something, and that we cannot stop the
flow of feeling. In general, our feeling is either affirmative or negative: but
between these opposites there is endless variety, and this variety has many
names. If we feel affirmative to something, we take that thing into ourselves
and make it part of our lives; if negative, we reject it. Yet it should be
observed that we cannot reject a thing without at the same time being aware of
its opposite and longing for that opposite. In other words, there is an
affection for something that rejects whatever is disturbing to it.
The same thing appears if
instead of affection we say delight. For whatever we favor in our affection,
that is delightful to us; and whatever we reject is undelightful.
It is well known also that we
cannot stop thinking whether we think foolishly or wisely. Even if we try, we at
least think of our effort not to think! But thought never occurs alone in the
mind; it is ever the form of affection, of some affection. Hence the real reason
we cannot stop thinking is that we cannot stop feeding, cannot stop the constant
flow of affections. This shows that our affections are our life. They must be
fed from somewhere, and they are fed from somewhere; whether it be from the Lord
through the angelic heaven, or from the Divine as perverted or profaned through
hell. It would be foolish to think that the affections, being activities, can be
self-perpetuating.
The food for these affections
is what is called our daily bread. If we sincerely turn to the Lord for that
food, then He will give it in the form of influx of good through heaven.
Nevertheless, this is only one side of the picture: for unless there is teaching
from the Word, and unless there is repentance according to that teaching, there
is nothing with man to receive the influx. Only a state of order can receive
heavenly influx, and repentance brings the order of the Word into the mind. The
result is harmony, and in harmony is sensed delight.
There is, however, food for the
mind before repentance, too, and this of necessity, for nothing can subsist
without food. But that early food is of a special kind, even as the mind that
eats it is special and. different from what it will be after repentance and
regeneration. The eating is then like the years of abundance in Egypt; it is not
so much from real hunger as from a care-free taking in of the knowledges gained
by study and experience. At the same time, there is a laying up in internal
storehouses of food for later use. It is also like the first two days of
creation, and the first two petitions of the Lord s Prayer: the turning to the
Lord as the giver of light, and the gathering of knowledge of His kingdom,
separating those above the expanse from those below. Before a man can be
regenerated, we read, he needs to be furnished with all things that may serve
as means, with the goods and delights of the affections as means for the will;
and with truths from the Word of the Lord, and also with confirmatory things
from other source, as means for the understanding. Until a man is furnished with
such things, he cannot be regenerated, these being for food (AC 677).
All this may be regarded as
descriptive of the feeding of the potential man, the new man to be. But after
repentance the things that have been held in readiness are assimilated by his
natural mind itself, not at once, but gradually; and he begins to sense there,
too, the delights of the affections of heaven.
If, then, we are fed in
different ways according to the nature of our state, in one way before
repentance and in another afterwards, and with endless variety in each instance
in constant accommodation to the form of the recipient (AC 681), it is clear
what is meant by praying for bread for this day. So praying if it is done in
spirit and in truth we open our minds to the guidance and influx of the Lord, so
that He may feed our state according to its need at the time; that is, may
either provide a storehouse for spiritual affections or cause us to appropriate
such affections as our own, which is to eat them.
The past is present in a
spiritual state, whatever its nature, for the present is the result of the
leading of the Lord s providence and instruction from His Word in the past. And
the future is contained also, for gratitude for the past is the mother of trust
for the morrow.
These things can be known and
acknowledged intellectually at any time, even when the natural mind is in a
state of rebellion. Then there is, as it were, an eating of the bread of heaven
in the internal mind only. Not until the external mind has repented of its ways
may it eat also, and sense the delight of heaven. Then the two great luminaries
of love and faith will come forth to shed their blessings, and the stars of
knowledges in the firmament of the memory will sparkle like heavenly jewels.
These things are man s bread, the living bread that causes his own self, his
natural self to be vivified for the first time. They are all from the Lord, who
is the greatest luminary the sun of heaven and who, from that sun, makes all
things come alive. And the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world.
TO CONTINUE :
Beginning -
Lesson - 2 -
Lesson - 3 -
Lesson - 4 -
Lesson - 5 -
Lesson - 7 -
Lesson - 8 -
Lesson - 9 -
Lesson 10 -
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