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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

October 5, 2022

The Invitatory

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come let us adore him.

Reading: Luke 11:1-4

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.

  Your kingdom come.

  Give us each day our daily bread.

  And forgive us our sins,

    for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

  And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

It is probably good practice to reflect on the Lord’s Prayer periodically, particularly in the wake of Sunday’s Adult Forum on prayer. Depending on one’s situation in life the Prayer can offer new revelations and appreciation. In my most recent reading I was moved by its offer of freedom that enhances God’s active goodness and charity to us.

Set the prayer in the context of the first commandment: to love God with heart, soul, strength, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. Once grounded in God’s person and reign can we make requests that reflect our personal needs, our relationships with our neighbors, and the struggles of our own souls.

The prayer as Jesus teaches his disciples, follows the pattern of the commandment to love God with heart, soul, strength, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. Only after the prayer is grounded in God’s person and power do we offer requests that reflect our personal needs, our relationships with our neighbors, and the struggles of our own lives and souls.

Jesus’ teaching on prayer opens and closes with the Father. The Father responds to prayers with a goodness and faithfulness incomparably greater than that of earthly parents. He gives more than anyone could ask or imagine. This Father loves with a mercy beyond human reasonableness and fairness and beyond our ability to meet God’s love with our own. Whatever we lack and however we fall short, God loves us relentlessly.

God is the source of holiness and here we express a desire to approach God with the joyful reverence of love. Acknowledging this opens to us the beauty of holiness at work in our lives and to the fullness of God’s holiness present in the created world.

When we ask for the coming of the kingdom, we are again asking for a gift God wants to give. The kingdom has indeed already been revealed in Jesus. The kingdom is both a gift and something for which we strive, so our prayer for its coming is also a prayer that we would know how to equip ourselves to be citizens.

With the fourth petition, we are invited to turn to God in the small, but urgent matters of our lives and learn to trust in the Father’s mercies because the Father knows our needs. The prayer recognizes that we do need the essentials of life day by day, but only enough. There is a hope inherent in the petition that we will neither worry nor hoard, but beyond that is a desire to be fully present in the small day-to-day things of life. Perhaps then, we can sense Jesus’ presence even in our meals.

When we pray for forgiveness, we are invited to consider forgiveness as release for the forgiver as much as the forgiven. Both God’s forgiveness of us and ours of our neighbors are active in this petition, not because God will not forgive unless we forgive first; but because we are called to model our love on God’s. In forgiving others, we free ourselves to experience God’s forgiving love more fully, which makes it possible for us to love still more. This freedom gives abundant life to us. What follows is deliverance from temptation that can cripple or destroy the soul.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

    hallowed be thy Name,

    thy kingdom come,

    thy will be done,

        on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

    as we forgive those

        who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

    but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

    and the power, and the glory

   for ever and ever. Amen.