The fourth of seven sonnets written by Malcolm Guite on the Lord’s Prayer …
Give us this day our daily bread we pray,
As though it came straight from the hand of God,
As though we held an empty plate each day,
And found it filled, by miracle, with food,
Although we know the ones who plough and sow,
Who pick and plant and package whilst we sleep
With slow backbreaking labour, row by row,
And send away to others all they reap,
We know that these unseen who meet our needs
Are all themselves the fingers of your hand,
As are the grain, the rain, the air, the land,
And, slighting these, we slight the hand that feeds.
What if we glimpsed you daily in their toil
And found and thanked and served you through them all?
© Malcolm Guite from Parable and Paradox – Published 2016