The Lord's Prayer

I have never been "good" at prayer. I have a hard time focusing, as my mind is almost always racing and sitting quietly gives it even more of an excuse to do so. In teaching our daughter L the Lord's prayer, I have found it helpful of late to use the prayer as a guide for my own prayers. I meditate on each line of the prayer and use it to guide my own. I am going to write out my own thoughts for each line of the prayer on this here blog; a kind of exegesis of sorts, though not really.

Mat 6:9

"Our Father which art in Heaven"

The first word "Our" shows the corporate aspect of prayer. We approach God as His bride and His body. God saves individuals, but only as a part of his people. Modern Americans unashamedly have a problem with individualism, and this disease is not at all absent from the church . In a culture where everything is about the individual, including salvation, we would do well to remember that God has set apart a people for Himself, of which we are graciously a part. When we approach the throne of God in prayer we are approaching it as His bride, so we should remember to lift up our brothers and sisters that are besides us. And this doesn't only include the brothers and sisters in our local church, but rather the saints gathered around the world. Pretty exciting stuff. Remembering that prayer is essentially a corporate act, even when alone in your prayer closet, can be helpful in guarding yourself against morbid introspection or dwelling on selfish desires.

Related to this corporate aspect is the next word "Father." The familial aspect of the people of God and their relation to one another should be driven home by the fact that we all have a common father. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are exactly that because we are born of the same father (2 Cor 6:18). We may share almost nothing else in common, but our familial relationship is secured by our paternal line, so to speak. It's amazing to me to think that I am praying to the same Father that King David prayed to. Over 4,000 years ago, King David was looking to the sky and talking to the same Father that I am, and He has never changed. I am truly a brother to one of the most magnificent men in history. Take that even farther and meditate on the relationship to our elder brother Jesus and its almost too much to take (Mt 12:50).

Our Father is not an earthly father, for he dwells in Heaven. This honestly kind of blows my mind, still. I think about our prayers rising up like incense to our Lord who is enthroned in heaven. He sits above us over all time, He was in heaven when King David petitioned Him and He has not been moved, nor will He be, by any power other than His own.  

¶ 2/04/2005 09:13:00 AM