The Lord’s Prayer – that Jesus taught his disciples and still teaches us – is a communal touchstone, a grounding point for aligning us with God’s vision and God’s agenda for the world. All should be fed. All should be forgiven sins and debts. All should be protected.
It is a prayer that’s powerfully political: God’s kingdom is not ours, and yet it is, in fact, defined by our feeding, our forgiving, our protecting, and our welcoming.
Let that kingdom come. That sort of inbreaking and action takes breath. It takes holy breath. It takes Holy Spirit.
And so, Jesus seems to be saying that when we pray that prayer, we are praying for the Holy Spirit to come and fill us so that we can be ambassadors of feeding and forgiving and protecting and welcoming.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we become disciples too – disciples of God’s reign, agenda and vision.
This message is excerpted from “Dear God, thank you for…” by Anna Madsen in the July/August 2021 Gather magazine.
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