Prayer: The Lord's Prayer

More on prayer this week.


Pray then in this way: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. ~ Matthew 6:9-13 (NRSV)
With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
    as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
    Yes. Yes. Yes. ~ Matthew 6:9-13 (The Message)
O Breathing Life, your Name shines everywhere! Release a space to plant your Presence here. Imagine your possibilities now.
Embody your desire in every light and form. Grow through us this moment's bread and wisdom.
Untie the knots of failure binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others' faults.
Help us not forget our Source,
Yet free us from not being in the Present.
From you arises every Vision, Power and Song from gathering to gathering.
Amen -
May our future actions grow from here! ~ Retranslation from Aramaic.
There are two opposing theories I've heard about how we use The Lord's Prayer...and both I believe to be true.

 The first one says that we must say the words of the Lord's Prayer in the version we are most accustomed to (as found in the King James Version of the Bible) because it is the version we know and are comforted by. This theory says that when someone comes to church for the first time in a long time it may be the only thing that they know and so the greatest thing that can make them feel connected to the church.

 The other theory says that our use of the King James Version has made it rote. Most of us can say it in our sleep. It doesn't take any thought, and so it can become almost meaningless as just another thing we say by memory. This theory says to try saying it in the modern translation (ie: taking out all the thy's and thine's out of it).

 And yes, both of those competing views are absolutely true. So what are we to do?

 Can we do both...and actually, can we do MORE?

 When Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer to his disciples he told them to pray "like" this. He did not say: Say these words as prayer.

 And that's good, because as we can see in both the NRSV and Message versions, neither are the ones most of us say in worship.

 So the Lord's Prayer gives us a model to pray, so that we can avoid the trap of saying the words as rote or words we have memorized.

 But it also gives us grounding that we can follow and cling to  as something we know as well as our own name.

 Both things are true.

 So while we may continue in worship say the version with which we are most familiar, perhaps in other areas of our lives - in private prayer, in meetings or other gatherings - we can use it as a model and say the prayer in a different way.

 Perhaps we can write a version of it ourselves (I know someone who wrote it in the style of Dr. Seuss!!).

 There are wonderful ways to make this prayer even more rich for you than it already is. Jesus said "Pray like this," and then gave us creative freedom to find just what that meant for us!

 Prayer: Find or write a version of the Lord's Prayer that you can incorporate into your prayer life. (for ideas, there's a wonderful website that has many different versions here:
http://www.standonline.org.uk/themes/stand/documents/Resource_6_Alternative-Lords-prayers.pdf






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