Turning

As we’ve turned toward the Lord’s prayer this summer, each line of the prayer has offered up a new gracious facet about prayer itself, as taught by Christ. In case you missed it, here is a summary.

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy NAME.” Prayer is the vocation, the ultimate calling of every human being who God has introduced himself to by name. This prayer makes us more like Jesus, the ultimate human being who bears God’s name.

“Thy KINGdom come, thy will be DOne.” The kingdom of God is not something we have to achieve through effort in prayer - it is the gift of a good King. Prayer is time to relax and allow God to DO TO us, and shape our doing.

“Give us this day OUR daily bread.” Prayer connects us to a wider community, the “we” of all who eat, and expands our faith in what God is doing for all Creation. Name, King, Doing, Our - these are all empowering words. But now for the rest of our series, we will turn towards the harder phrases - words all about sin. Trespasses, Temptation, Evil. What has prayer to do with these?

As you know, in Gaza, 70,000 people (as admitted now by the Israeli military) have been killed, and nearly 200,000 wounded. Vast numbers have also died indirectly, because of the destruction of medical facilities and homes, and starvation. Since the ceasefire started, a thousand more Palestinians have been killed by Israel, which still occupies 70 percent of the land. Two million civilians are confined to the remaining third without infrastructure. This is called genocide - mass-murder of a certain type of people, for whatever the reason.

On August 29th, we are invited to an event at Calvary Church to raise funds for some of the orphan survivors in Gaza. Many people think we should just stick to charity without naming political realities. But the Lord’s prayer challenges us to be explicit about words. Gaza feels like the world has turned away from them. How can we turn towards?

with love, Pr. Chelsea