The Lord's Prayer (A Lenten Meditation - Part Four)

"Give us this day our daily bread."

Only God really knows what our needs for each day are. And so we turn to Him. And we ask. We ask as children, having been taught that He is our Father. And we ask expecting, having learned that He is our Heavenly Father, whose Name is hallowed. And we ask, not simply for ourselves, but that all His children would have their needed bread. Today. Tomorrow, we will ask again.

How deep is the mystery of this asking. Unarguably, God knows our needs. Unarguably, He desires to meet our needs, for He is that kind of God. And still, we are taught to pray for daily bread. Perhaps it is more a relationship we are being taught into than a necessity for existence. Or, perhaps, relationship with Him is necessary for our existence. For bread goes far beyond what we need to eat. Bread is life.

Bread pushes us to consider what our daily lives require. Truthfully, unless they are much too small, daily bread is often the least of our needs. We are pushed to think. How much life do I need for today? How much life from above, from the Kingdom of the heavens, do I require for this days living? So many days, the answer is little. Or none. My daily life is completely self-contained. It is so narrowly and shallowly lived that no external resources are needed.

What would happen if we had to live up to our daily bread? If we had to completely consume all the resources given us for the day? Would we even know how to live so fully that each day is complete consumed, creating a deep demand for tomorrow's bread when it comes? Or do we try and hoard some of today's life, just in case tomorrow's bread runs short? Perhaps we even long for the bread of tomorrow, today. But no. Sufficient unto the day is the bread thereof.

And so, we ask. We ask from the whole of our being, for the wholeness of our being. We ask of One who is able to make bread out of nothing. And has. "Give us what we need for today."

Moon Shine

All alone

                  in the dark

                                    feeling the weight

                                    of it

                                                      crushing in

                                                      pressing in

                                                      pushing in

                  nothing heavier

It has a death

                  of its own

                                    swirling

                                    creaking

                                    echoing

                                                      memories

                  making madness

                  alone

                                    in the dark

                  surrounded by

                                    jagged edged hopes smashed

                                    remembering of might have

                                    disappointment piled high

                                    regrets threaten crushing collapse

                  unseen in the dark

                                     and more threatening because

                  even shadows lose to the dark

And then. . .

                  moon shine

pushing back

                  giving shape to shadows

                  make it less

                                    dark

                                    lonely

                                    fearsome

not real light

                  reflected

but enough

                  for this dark

                  night

                           

The Lord's Prayer (A Lenten Meditation, Part Three)

"Thy Will be done,

on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Here we enter into mystery. Jesus is teaching us to pray that what the Father wishes to happen will, in fact, happen. It stretches our understanding enough to include the idea of the Father's will not being some monolithic force moving in time and space to bring things to pass. There are, apparently, some things that occur that are not His will, and there are, apparently, some things that are His will that don't occur. And we are given the opportunity to partner with Him in the reducing of the number of those things. The prayer for the accomplishing of God's will is a prayer that puts us fully in the flow of His work in the world. And not just as an interested bystander, but as an active participant.

We have made the determination that this prayer answered will be better than this prayer not answered. That God's will being done on earth will be better than any of the alternatives. This is a prayer on the way to Kingdom coming and centers on what is here and now. We align ourselves with God's desires. Some of them are so clear and known that we may pray more specifically. We may pray that we become more like Jesus. That is the Father's will for all His children. We may pray for the salvation of persons, for we know that God is not willing that any should perish. We may pray that the Lord of the Harvest would send out laborers into His harvest field, for we have it on good authority that that is precisely what He desires as well.

But some of what the Father wants is not so clear or precise. We pray as if looking through a darkened glass - listening deeply to hear the whispers of His will in this situation or that - praying as we sense the Spirit blowing this way or that. Always bring our prayer to the heart of the Father for correction or direction - we do not insist that what we want becomes His will, but that what He wants becomes ours.

The locus of this prayer is the only place we know of in the universe where it is not already so. It is here on earth that choices were made to set aside His will. And so, it is here on earth that we pray, "May your will be fully accomplished."

Winter Waiting

Spring, rapidly approaching, is a reminder of life renewed. Green buds appear overnight on trees looking, for all intents and purposes, dead. The harbingers stick their heads bravely up into the still cold morning air and defy the winter chill to hold back the spring. Daffodils and irises trumpet the glory to come with a flash and dash of their own. Tulips and hyacinths add to the riotous beauty that shouts the soon arrival of life after death.

It does not take too many days of cold weather to begin to count the days until warmth returns. We have been trained to comfort’s sliding scale. What, in another time and place, would have been greeted with shirt-sleeved walks around the park, is now reason enough to put another log on the fire and hunker down against the hostile elements! And then, one quick day, the sun shine calls us out of darkness into glorious light! We can hardly wait. In fact, we have been trained to hardly wait. Waiting is as good as death to us. To wait is to let things be – to enter into the mystery of what we can not control.

Lent is a season of embraced waiting – of choosing to be still and know the certainty of needed dying; of not rushing to light so quickly that we miss the treasures in the dark – and the light; of not longing so much for new life, resurrection life, that we miss the moments on the way, the stations on the side of the road that call for a certain, stillness in order to reflect, in order to enter in fully.

We do this in hope that once again life will triumph over death. Not the hope of our culture that is a weak wish, but the substantial hope that stands with certainty on the bedrock of faith. Only those who have been trained to life can deal comfortably and unhurriedly with death. Those living uncertainly find death a constant threat and so hurry over every reminder, like a boy racing over a frozen pond thinking that speed will keep him above water.

The leisurely stroll that is lent takes its toll on the false life, on the parasitic life, on the plastic life, that is no life at all. Such lifes can not stand slow. It finds them out sooner rather than later. Silk flowers in winter gardens fool only those driving by – not those whose pace slows to a walk.

And so, we walk and notice, inhaling the fragrance of promise while not giving in to the temptation to force life from death. Which, come to think of it, is not our business anyway.

The Lord's Prayer (A Lenten Meditation - Part Two)

"Thy Kingdom Come."

The longing for God's Kingdom to come does not arise simply from the pain of the current kingdoms in which we live. It is not just a matter of comparison. We pray for the Kingdom to come because in that prayer is contained all the other prayers we will ever pray. Were the Kingdom to come, in fullness, our longings would be satisfied, our hopes realized.

But to pray this prayer is difficult. It pushes us to the edge of our kingdoms and bids us submit them, even now, to His. If we are not careful in this praying, we may be tempted to seek the incorporation of His Kingdom into ours. But that is not what we pray. We want His Kingdom to come - even if that means the end of our kingdoms. For, deep down and in Christ, we know that, when His Kingdom comes, we will be better off, even if our own kingdom suffers in the coming.

The desire for the spread, the expansion, of God's effective rule arises out of an awareness of what that might look like. When God's Kingdom comes, the weakest one will be as safe and regarded as the strongest. When God's Kingdom come, community will make the full expression of individuality. When God's Kingdom comes, the only tears will be of joy and of laughter. When God's Kingdom comes, the abuses of power leading to injustice will become a dim memory. When God's Kingdom comes, those who occupy positions of authority will serve in reality and not just in name.

There is some sense in which to pray for His Kingdom to come is to pray for the end of the age, for that is when it will come in full. But it is possible to pray this for our own age and our own time and our own reality. While the Kingdom may not yet come in fullness, we pray for its steady and irresistible advance. We pray for an incremental incursion into the kingdoms of darkness and despair. We pray over our own lives, our own spheres of influence, our own kingdoms, "Oh God, Your Kingdom come."