Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.  Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the LORD?"  Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God (Proverbs 30:8b-9).

Middle-class people are the most godly people in the world.  Clearly.  They do their work, pay their taxes, maintain their lawns, educate their children, and never have to deal with the extremes of poverty or prosperity.  Obviously, this makes them better people.  Doesn't it?

I say all of this in jest, of course -- because middle-class people are actually some of the most conflicted people in the world.  I should know because I am one.  Middle-class people are the ones who know the fear of poverty and what it's like to genuinely panic when an unexpected bill shows up in the mail.  They know just how anxious things can become when companies downsize, when school tuitions increase, when the washing machine (or the car, or the window, or the family computer) breaks.  Most middle-class people have personal stories of hardship or scarcity -- or can at least tell you about a time when they were just a whisker away from homelessness.

But at the same time, middle-class people know the temptations of materialism.  They know the dreams that can fill one's head when it comes to special salary bonuses, real estate opportunities, and upward social and/or employment mobility.  They know the incessant crush of prosperity, when a certain type of sneaker becomes "essential" for the teenagers at school, when the new kind of mobile electronic device hits the market, when "keeping up with the Joneses" becomes a serious goal in life.  Most middle-class people have personal stories of "opportunities that couldn't be refused" or seasons of success -- and they can tell you about a time when they were just a whisker away from the "good life."

So when I read Proverbs 30:8-9, I realize that these words need to be the prayer of any middle-class person:  not that they can stay middle-class or keep themselves in the "most godly" socio-economic arrangement (which is, perhaps, one way of taking the text, as I started to satirically sketch out in the first paragraph), but that they can realize how seriously they run the risk of falling into extremes.  If our prayer ever becomes, "Oh, God -- how are we supposed to make our credit card payment this month?" or "Please, please, please, God, if you could just get that promotion to come through for me..." we need to stop ourselves, shake ourselves, and remind ourselves that our daily bread is enough.  We don't have to pray for any more or any less.  We can be content to be middle-class (though we can also be content to be rich or poor, if that's what God has for us in life).  Just as long as we remain humble, honorable, and dependent on God.  Thus, I would say that Proverbs 30:8-9 is an ideal call to prayer for middle-class people (and any other social class of people), world over.  It makes sense, doesn't it, that Jesus included this in his model prayer:  "Give us this day our daily bread..."  If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for the rest of us.