Scripture Verse

Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:11

Introduction

portrait
Adelaide Procter
(1825–1864)

Words: Ade­laide A. Proc­ter, The Po­ems of Ade­laide A. Proc­ter (New York: Tho­mas Y. Crow­ell, 1858), pag­es 385–86.

Music: Bax­ter (Bur­nap) Uz­zi­ah C. Bur­nap, in The New Al­le­lu­ia, ed­ited by M. Wool­sey Stryk­er & Hu­bert P. Main (New York: Big­low & Main, 1886, num­ber 102) (🔊pdf nwc).

portrait
Uzziah Burnap (1834–1900)

Lyrics

Give us our dai­ly bread,
O God, the bread of strength!
For we have learned to know
How weak we are at length.
As child­ren we are weak,
As child­ren must be fed—
Give us Thy grace, O Lord,
To be our dai­ly bread.

Give us our dai­ly bread—
The bit­ter bread of grief.
We sought earth’s pois­oned feasts
For plea­sure and re­lief;
We sought her dead­ly fruits,
But now, O God, in­stead,
We ask Thy heal­ing grief
To be our dai­ly bread.

Give us our dai­ly bread
To cheer our faint­ing soul;
The feast of com­fort, Lord,
And peace, to make us whole:
For we are sick of tears,
The use­less tears we shed;
Now give us com­fort, Lord,
To be our dai­ly bread.

Give us our dai­ly bread,
The bread of an­gels, Lord,
By us, so ma­ny times,
Broken, be­trayed, ad­ored:
His bo­dy and His blood—
The feast that Je­sus spread:
Give Him—our life, our all—
To be our dai­ly bread!