Recent Blog Posts

Blog Post Archives

Subscribe to Blog via Email (Version 1: Wordpress)

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog via Wordpress and receive notifications of new posts by email. You will receive emails every time—and as soon as—a new post is made.

Subscribe to Blog via Email (Version 2: Feedburner)

Use this link to subscribe to this blog via Feedburner and receive notifications of new posts by email:

You will receive just one email at the end of the day (around 11:00 PM Eastern Time) summarizing all the posts made during the day.

You may also use the “By Email” link in the upper right hand corner of the page.

Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer

Some prayers flow like water. They roll from your very soul because they are so well thought out by their authors. Of course, the very best author of prayer is God Almighty in the person of Jesus Christ!

The Lord’s Prayer is so beautiful in its simplicity and directness. It tells us of God’s love, and what we must do to get it. While no fault can be found with or in it, there is a fault in us regarding its use. We say it so very often (which is good) that we do it by rote and pay no attention to it (which is bad).

Thy will be done. God’s will, not ours. We must all learn to submit to God’s will. After all, Christ submitted himself to die a terrible death for our sins. It would seem the least we could do to accept that he knows what is better for us than we do for ourselves.

Give us this day our daily bread. This day, not tomorrow, not next week, and Christ reiterates the importance of this plea right after telling us how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:34. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. We must have faith in our submission to God that He will take care of us.

Forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us. The capitalization of the letter “A” in the text from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer is intended as an aid for communal reading. It indicates a pause. But I think the capitalization of “as” is important for another reason:

Jesus tells us repeatedly that if we want to receive forgiveness from God and to fully receive his love, we need to forgive our fellow men.

Being frail human beings, we often tend to rattle off the Lord’s Prayer quickly and without thought. It is important to strive to change this. We need the faith to know that God will give us exactly what we need—albeit not necessarily what we ask for. ROBERT LUDWIG✠

Comments are closed.