Dear Friends,

The Lord’s Prayer is a hearty and helpful companion in my experience. I have no idea when I first learned it, unlike Psalm 23 which I learned from my Mom when I was four and recited in our little church. Both Scripture passages have personalized, enriched and illuminated my understanding of our heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, who he sent to redeem us from sin and death.

We would each pray in turn in our family worships. My Dad would always pray last and he would frequently conclude by praying, “May we see Thee returning soon in the clouds of heaven so that we can go home and live with the One who taught us to pray, ‘Our Father who art in heaven . . . .” We would all join in saying the Lord’s Prayer together at that point. That’s where I must have learned the prayer in the King James’ English that my Dad repeated with a tender reverence that will always be the tone and pitch in which Jesus’ words sing to my heart.

I came to think of the prayer as a blanket covering our family with the love and protection of our heavenly Father. Fifty years later, I pray with modern language, but I still like to pull that prayer-blanket close around me as I lie in bed at night after a difficult day, driving to work or while hiking up a steep trail in the mountains. It is a profound blessing to know that I have a Father in heaven holding my loved ones, friends, and even enemies in the encircling embrace of “Our Father.”

Reading C.S. Lewis taught me about “festooning” which means to add your own thoughts and concerns at each phrase of the prayer to make it personal. This is something like, ” ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” including that difficult conversation that I will have today, and in my relationships in the law firm and at the University, especially _____ who is having such a hard time right now. ‘Give her today, the daily bread and sustenance that she needs to make it through . . . .” and so on. You get the point.

After I received a knee replacement two years ago, I was able to return to exercise. I hired a personal trainer, Patty, to push me along to fitness. Sometimes she challenges me with planks, a form of torture, er . . . exercise in which I lift my self up from a prone position on my forearms and toes and hold that pose for thirty seconds in three sets of three repetitions each. If a work-out has been particularly strenuous, the last set of planks can cause my whole body to shake and tremble as I struggle to hold the pose.

My appearance must be similar to a breaching whale as my bulk pushes up off the mat. I am too old and too grateful for health to worry about how I look. It takes my whole focus to get through each plank.

At first I silently counted “thirty thousand, twenty-nine thousand” down to “one-thousand” at the annoying beep of the digital timer, but that kept my mind on the strain of what I was doing. I found that slowly and evenly praying the Lord’s Prayer would take me about 28 seconds and keep me thinking of my sovereign Lord and his grace which is a great comfort to me. I don’t recite this as some mindless mantra, but I really think through each phrase with the pictures of God and the needs of the people in my life they bring to mind.

The first miracle I received by praying this way was the improvement of my attitude about planks and about Patty-the-trainer who makes me do them. It also reminded me of something I learned a while back about “reverse engineering” (my phrase) the structure of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9-13). Reverse engineering is a process by which a finished construction like a machine, a process, software etc. is taken apart piece by piece to learn how it is put together.

Reverse engineering the Lord’s Prayer will take one on the path of the exodus of the Children of Israel from their enslavement in Egypt to their new life with the Lord in the Promised Land. This was a great discovery because that’s a path that I’ve had to traverse myself.

The path starts, of course, with the need to be rescued from evil. The Israelites were in bondage to a nation engrossed in the idolatry of work and ritualistic religion. Both of these idols demand human sacrifices of a type that is ever-present wherever human effort is the highest power and fear is the prevailing spirit. God called them out, not to instant relief, but to walk with him and learn that it takes his grace to master the sin that holds us captive (See Rom 5:20).

There is a constant need to pray that we are not given greater trials and temptations than we can bear when obedience to the Lord’s call takes us across seemingly impassable seas and barren, rocky, desert spaces. Ease and luxury are seductive, but hard, desperate times can produce even greater temptations to faithlessness. Augur, son of Jakeh, made this observation recorded in Proverbs 30:7-8.

Two things I ask of you;

do not deny them to me before I die:

Remove far from me falsehood and lying;

    give me neither poverty or riches;

    feed me with the food that I need,

or I shall be full, and deny you,

    and say, “Who is the Lord?”

or I shall be poor and steal,

    and profane the name of my God.

Human flesh is weak, the journey was long and hot, and the best of intentions went awry. Freedom carries responsibilities, but the Israelites began to grumble and rebel and the frictions of living together in hostile terrain began to take their toll. The chains of resentment and violence threatened to hold them back. God wanted them to move on and that required forgiveness and mercy extended between them so he could show them the full extent of his forgiveness and mercy.

Jesus made forgiveness of each other the key to effective prayer. “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors . . . For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:12, 14-15). God is not bound by time. He longs for us to know eternity. But when we hold on to insults and injuries we chain ourselves to the time of their occurrence and that denies God’s plans to give us an unlimited future and a hope.

As the journey continued, old appetites and cravings stirred. Obsessions and desires threatened to enslave once again. Addictions are so resilient that they can lie dormant for a long time, waiting to be awakened by stress or memory. God supplied the Israelites with manna, wonderful food, but only enough for a day at a time lest they hoard and seek control and deny his grace.

Jesus prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread” on the same principle that our heavenly Father is our true supply and a daily relationship with him carries everything needed to sustain the life that he gives us (Matt 6:11). Obedience , a listening, willing response, is necessary to maintain this essential relationship of the human to the Divine for the long haul.

The Lord gave the law as a covenant with the Israelites to keep them close to him and free of the enslavements that humans assume when they seek to live without his rule (Ex 20:1-17; Deut 5:6-21). Jesus simplifies that covenant in his prayer to surrender to our Father’s reign,”Your kingdom come,”  and submission to our Father’s authority, “Your will be done.” His prayer made a request that is broader in scope, but more intimate in application than the law. Rather than the objective statutory of the law of Moses, Jesus said to ask for the sovereign rule of the Father over every aspect of our lives.

With Jesus came a grace and truth that proved to be life itself. In the presence of representatives of the law and the prophets, God the Father said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and  were overcome by fear, but Jesus came to them and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’And when they looked up, they saw no one but Jesus alone” (Matt 17:5-7).

The law demanded obedience, but Jesus commands our allegiance. Those who follow Jesus through the cross, yield everything to him including their very life. Those who receive the resurrection of Jesus Christ by the glory of the Father as their salvation receive Jesus’ very life as their own (Rom 6:4, Gal 2:19-20; Col 3:1-4). Only those who passed through the waters of the Jordan River came to life in the Promised Land.

It is the Father’s power that makes this new creation possible. “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:6-7).

With this vital connection of life from the sole source of God’s power, we can see why Jesus would pray, “Hallowed be Your name.” The loving imprint of the Father is found throughout Creation, drawing our attention to him and  calling us to reverence. The prophet Isaiah in vision saw the Seraphs in heaven attending to the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, calling out “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord  of hosts;  the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa:6:3).

At the end of our journey from exile to home is “Our Father in heaven” whose love made it possible. Israel reached the Promised Land, but our greater hope is to dwell with our heavenly Father forever in his house where Jesus said he has gone ahead to prepare a place for us (John 14:2-3). When we arrive we will cry out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory” (Rev 19:6-7).

I have retraced the path of the Lord’s Prayer from its end to its beginning because it is a marvelous thing to glimpse the Father’s love and the Son’s faithfulness from another direction. But Jesus started his prayer where we should always begin our waking and sleeping and everything we do — by praying to “Our Father in heaven . . . for the kingdom and the power and the glory are Yours forever. Amen” (Matt  6:9-13).

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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