When you order a pizza, who is providing your family dinner? Is it you? Or is it God? Or is it the people actually making the pizza?
Martin Luther described the way that God works in this world as the “mask of God.” He taught that God is actually hidden in the world doing things like providing our “daily bread” in the ordinary work of chefs, police officers, moms, and dads. I wrote a bit about this on an awesome site called ChristHoldFast:
In order for me to eat pizza with my family that evening, I had to place a phone call to the restaurant. Thanks to the designers, marketers, manufacturers, and sales people at Apple I had a phone that could do the job. In order to get the appropriate phone number I googled the local pizza place. The search led to a website, which required a web designer...
To feed my family, God worked through web designers, employees at the pizza parlor, a small-business owner, police officers, car manufacturers, and so on. Each and every person doing their work was an important piece of my family having dinner that evening. You could even say that those hundreds of people were unknowingly serving my family, providing our daily bread. God was blessing me through others.