Daily Reflection – 2/28/2023
Sacred Scripture
Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the
pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not
be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how
you are to pray: ‘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.’
If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive
you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your
transgressions.” (Matthew 6:7-15)
Reflection
Some look at the
Christian faith as a series of rules we obey. But that is far from the truth.
Christianity is not about what we do and don’t do. It’s about a relationship.
It’s about a relationship with the God who made us.
It’s not about what
you know; it’s not about what you do; it’s about who you know.
Think about the fact
that when you love someone, that comes out in the way you live. Today’s
scripture tells us how knowing God comes out in the way we pray.
The Lord’s prayer
starts by telling us to address God as “our Father in heaven”. We pray to God
as our Father. He’s not an abstract principle. God is a person. But if God is
our Father that also means he’s a person who loves us. He wants to hear us. He
wants us to ask him things. None of our human fathers have ever loved us
perfectly.
Then we pray seeking
the honor of God. After Jesus tells us which God we pray to, the Lord’s Prayer
then has six requests. The first three are all to do with God’s honor. We are
to pray that God’s name would be honored. We are to pray that God’s kingdom
would come. We are to pray that God’s will would be done. Even those of us who
acknowledge that Jesus is our king do not always live as he would want, so we
are to pray that God’s priorities would be worked out in the here and now.
Calling God our
Father also means recognizing that the loves us and wants to look after us, and
because he’s our Father in heaven he’s able to give us all we need. And this
also comes out in the way we pray, as the last three requests of the Lord’s
Prayer shows.
What’s slightly
surprising is what we ask for. It’s not quite what we’d expect.
The first of these
three sounds obvious. Give us this day our daily bread. Bread here stands for
everything we need, our daily necessities. The challenge comes in that we just
ask for what we need for today, and possibly for tomorrow. This challenges us
in two ways. On the one hand, the fact that we are to pray for what we need may
seem obvious, but many of us just take things for granted.
But if the first
prayer for our needs is slightly surprising, the other two are even more so. .
If you asked me what we most need from God, what we should most be hoping he’d
do for us, I’d never have come up with what Jesus says next.
Forgive us our
trespasses as we also have forgiven our trespassers And lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from evil.
We all let God down
in the way we live. We do so every day. And so, we need God to forgive us for
what we do wrong. When we allow God to be the center of our lives, then we can
simply let go of our past transgressions because he has forgiven all. We MUST
believe that. Carrying the guilt of the past keeps us in an emotionally disabled
state. How can we love God if we can’t love ourselves?
We are all weak, and
prone to let God down tomorrow. We also need God to keep us from situations
where we won’t be able to remain true to him, and to give us his strength to be
faithful. He will because He does! The Holy Spirit, resident in each of is, is
there to remind us of potential sin and to strengthen us to resist evil. Giving
in, acknowledging our love of God, arms us and purifies us.
Forgiveness for the
past. Faithfulness for the future. Is there any more for which we could ask?
Prayer of The Day
“Father in
heaven, you have given me a mind to know you, a will to serve you, and a heart
to love you. Give me today the grace and strength to embrace your holy will and
fill my heart and mind with your truth and love that all my intentions and
actions may be pleasing to you.”
Daily Note
We can approach God
confidently because he is waiting with arms wide open to receive his prodigal
sons and daughters. That is why Jesus gave his disciples the perfect prayer
that dares to call God, Our Father. This prayer teaches us how to ask God
for the things we really need, the things that matter not only for the present
but for eternity as well. We can approach God our Father with confidence and
boldness because the Lord Jesus has opened the way to heaven for us through his
death and resurrection.
