Our Father

I had an interesting experience of prayer on a solo backpacking trip that was a part of my sabbatical. For years I have prayed through the Lord's Prayer, using it as an outline. I've always prayed in the plural forms, as Jesus gave us the prayer. I've never felt free to reduce the prayer down to "My Father." I've prayed it just as two, but never (after discovering the problem) as one. This weekend I had permission to pray the prayer as a twosome of Jesus and me. That was really different--lopsided. I need to explore it more. Powerful. He is our Brother. He is the one that is beside us. He promised never to leave us or forsake us. Of course we can speak to Him. The Spirit prays for us. Jesus intercedes for us. He prayed to His Father and taught us to do the same. Why shouldn't we pray with Him to our Father? Of course we need to enter into this kind of prayer with the humility to not treat it with flippancy. I feel that this prayer is something that has been entrusted to me after years of praying the Our Father in a more traditional way. I need to explore it more.

Of course Jesus can be a model for us in all of life and practice. So when I pray that "we" might make the Father's name holy a host of examples from Jesus' life spring to mind. Jesus was the coming of the kingdom. He is the only one that has ever perfectly done the will of the Father. He's the only man that has ever seen the Father's will done perfectly on earth as well as in heaven. Thinking about what Jesus needs stretches my mind. (Daily Bread) But his body (his church) has many needs. Likewise the idea of a debt of Jesus doesn't compute. But we have his example of rendering to Caesar. Temptation is another hard concept in this setting. My mind goes to the temptations that his body (the church) experience.