Give us today our daily bread

I have spent a bit of time recently studying the Lord’s Prayer - for the 24 hour prayer day in February, for teaching the children in our church, and just for myself too. I am very aware of how unbalanced my prayers can be, so I thought studying how Jesus teaches us to pray would be a good idea. The part which I have found most challenging is the part that I thought was the simplest: Give us today our daily bread.

This is about our needs, but I am struggling with two issues: (i) How do we distinguish ‘needs’ from ‘wants’? and (ii) Why is it that so many people in Cusco (and many other parts of the world) do not seem to have their basic needs met?

Let me tell you about a few of the people I have spent time with in the last couple of weeks:

The hospital is always a place of great need. Last week, with Robyn, I met a lady who had been lying on a trolley in the Emergency area for 4 days. She had diabetes and a severe infection in one foot. It appeared she needed the foot amputated or could die, but for some reason no one was attending to her. Her husband was desperate. Robyn managed to speak to the right person and within two hours she was in the operating theatre. The couple have a young son who cannot walk or speak, plus a 9-year-old daughter, and are certainly going to need some more help.

This week I visited Virginia (Jose’s mum from CORASON, who you may remember from the film on the blog last year, June 2010) who I had not seen for several months as the family had moved away. I saw Jose at the club and he said his mum was working in an internet cafe down the street. So the next day I went to see her. It turns out she is there 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, as she has to sleep there to make sure no one steals the computers! Her younger two kids (Jose, 10, and Marie Carmen, 8) go there each day to do their homework and go to the club, and sometimes sleep there too. There is a room at the back that they could rent as a family but it is S/.100 a month (£25) which is twice what they pay on the other side of town and Virginia says they can’t afford it. I feel very sad to think of her in that dark, bare room continually, not able to take care of her family properly. An added expense for the family is that Jose needs to go to Lima every few months for continued treatment for the severe burns he suffered two years ago.

Sonia is a young teenager whose home I wrote about on the blog once before, and whom we have helped with materials for school. I haven’t seen her at the club recently but occasionally see her up near the boys’ school as her school is located nearby. This week I saw her mum and discovered that Sonia does not live at home anymore. She lives at school with the Catholic sisters. The school must be well-funded as they offer places to kids from the poorest families and now I realise, takes them as boarders as well. I expect Sonia is being looked after quite well there, but I can’t imagine she had much choice regarding whether to board or not – her mother was struggling to provide the bare necessities at home.

Some of these people are Christians and some are not. Most people here have some sort of faith and do cry out to God for help to meet their needs. And they are needs – food, shelter and health care. A simple answer to the question of why so many needs are not being met is that the country as a whole probably does have the money to solve a good many of the problems, but as in many places there is widespread corruption and the money is not being spent properly. Another answer is that the church in Peru, or perhaps the church world-wide, also possesses, amongst her members, the resources to help people in this country and many others. If we are the body of Christ, are we not hearing God’s voice and understanding that we are the answer to these people’s prayers?

Reading Acts 2 is a little difficult as the model for the church presented there is radical sharing amongst the believers. Having recently come back from the UK, in all honesty we miss things like having a car, a constant water supply (with drinkable water), free education and health care, and food that you can just pull out of the freezer or a packet. We try and live simply, but just the fact that we can afford the ‘essentials’ makes us rich in comparison to most people. God does provide ‘our daily bread’ and more and we need to share what we have. The challenge is to work out how to do that - how to participate with God in answering other people’s prayers, helping people both spiritually and physically, and keeping in mind that the answer is not just handouts (see previous blog entry on ‘When helping hurts’ June 2010).

A few weeks later

Since writing the above entry, there have been a few developments regarding people mentioned above. Virginia and her family have now been able to rent the room behind the internet cafe – the price came down a bit, and Virginia is coming a few hours a week to help us at home which earns her a little more money. So her situation has improved significantly and she and her family are much happier.

Luisa, the lady who lost her foot recently, was discharged very quickly with no help and is now back in the hospital as she burned her other foot badly! Her little son, 7, who has multiple disabilities, has been given a place in a lovely school run by a charity near to CORASON, but hasn’t started yet since they are living too far away. We are trying to help the family find a little place near to CORASON so that he can go to school and so that the family can become part of our CORASON community and receive some support.

I was encouraged the other day by one of our CORASON mums who struggles to provide for her family. However, she is really growing in her relationship with God and says that when she doesn’t have enough food to make lunch for her kids she prays and God brings someone to the door with food for them. We have recently given her a few hours of work each week at the CORASON centre and so we hope this will help her with affording basic necessities.

So I guess I feel more encouraged that God does answer the prayer ‘Give us today our daily bread’...