Sometimes prayer becomes a laundry list. “God, please help me get this job. Please heal John’s gout. Please help Marie with her sciatic pain. I’d love to have good weather for Sunday’s picnic. Also…peace on the earth.” And so on. We all have stuff we’d like to have from God. There’s nothing inherently wrong with […]
Thy Will Be Done
July 7, 2016 By
One of the biggest problems we have in prayer is that we have horrifically bad practical theology. We pray as though we understand God to be a genie and ourselves to be his master. We present God a laundry list of stuff we want from him, then get annoyed if we don’t get what we […]
Our Father, Who Art In Heaven
May 19, 2016 By
One of the most astonishing features of the Lord’s Prayer is its beginning. There are many ways to call upon God: many titles, many names, many descriptors. But the model Jesus provides is a unique and remarkable pattern for addressing God. With an incredible economy of words, he challenges traditional notions of God, and highlights […]
Forgive us Our Debts and Trespasses
May 12, 2016 By
In our last post, we considered the variety found in praying the petition for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our…sins? debts? trespasses? Each of these forms of the petition has something to be said for them. But, let’s drill down a little bit into the two metaphors Jesus uses for sin: “debts” in […]
Forgive us Our…Debts? Trespasses? Sins?
May 5, 2016 By
Despite an enormous variety of denominational (and non-denominational) bodies, there is remarkable unity around the praying of the Lord’s Prayer. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants of all stripes pray this prayer and the prayer is prayed nearly verbatim in all traditions…except for the “forgive us our…” section of the prayer. For some it is “Forgive us […]
