In Luke 11, Jesus’ teaching about prayer follows close on the heels of his words about love. As the church shares the Lord’s Prayer, the true gift of this prayer might be the plural “us.” Each time we say, “Our Father,” we are reminded that we are all connected – all of us saints and sinners, flawed and yet beautiful, made in God’s image. We may not all love each other, but we are all beloved of God.
Those we cannot bring ourselves to love are still part of “us” in the Lord’s Prayer. We pray for their daily bread, too, that they might be forgiven, too – even that we might be the ones to forgive them! We pray that they, too, might be saved from times of trial, and that all of us might be delivered from evil – including the evil that divides us. As we pray in this way, we love our neighbor as ourselves, and even love our enemy. And “faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
This message is excerpted from “Labor of love” by Meghan Johnston Aelabouni in the February 4, 2022, faith reflection of Café online magazine. Today we commemorate the Martyrs of Japan, 1597.
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