THE LORD'S PRAYER

Given that Jesus taught His disciples the prayer that we now know as "the Lord's Prayer" as an alternative to "meaningless repetition" (Matthew 6:8), I find it a little humorous and a little sad that the Lord's Prayer is the prayer that is most often meaninglessly repeated. I find myself, whenever we pray it in church, which is every Sunday, trying extra hard to grasp the meaning of each phrase. Fortunately, I've heard some great sermons on it, so even if briefly, I'm able to steal away from the monotonous recitation of everyone around me and meditate on some aspect of this great prayer.

This week, during our session meeting, we concluded a time of prayer with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Here we go again, I thought to myself. I tried to block out the voices of those crammed up against me to the left and right, and enter into my little world of focus, where I could sit on one or more of these choice phrases. And then it occured to me that when Jesus taught His disciples to pray this prayer, it wasn't really meant to be this individual thing, but rather a group thing. My attitude of "everyone else around me reciting it is distracting me from praying" was totally off-base. It's not prayer to pray, but ours -- as Christians, as churches, and as a church leadership team.

Sure, I might not have been meaninglessly repeating the prayer, but I was doing something just as bad, if not worse: snobbily distancing myself from my Christian brother to my left, and my Christian sister to my right, in a self-centered attempt to pray the prayer by myself and for myself. I was being just like the religious leaders that droned on and on in prayer to exalt themselves. Jesus had us types in mind when He taught His disciples to pray differently. Clearly, I've got a lot more to learn from Him.