How to Pray

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
6 “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “This, then, is how you should pray: 

“‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

10      your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

11      Give us today our daily bread.

12      And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13      And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.’” (Matthew 6:6-13, NIV)

REFLECTIONS:
During our Lenten journey, I wrote about the Lord's Prayer as it was recorded in Luke's Gospel. (If you'd like, you can reread that devotional here.) Because of this, I'll keep things short today.

The pattern for prayer that Jesus gives his disciples is short on our wants and big on God's wants. Half of what Jesus tells us to do in prayer is to worship God, keep him holy, and ask that his kingdom and his will take shape, not ours. God the Father looms large. It is important for us to recognize the source of our spiritual and physical sustenance and to ground our days in asking for and receiving forgiveness, as well as calling for freedom from evil and all that pulls us toward wrong. This is a very bare-bones sort of prayer compared to many of the ways we pray today. There is nothing here about material wealth or perfect health or things that get me more of me. Instead, it is about there being more of God. And, more of God is what we need more than anything.


POINT OF ACTION:
As you try your simple prayer today, begin and end your prayer time with the Lord's Prayer. How does it feel different from your personal, simple prayer? 

"The Our Father [the Lord's Prayer, for the non-Catholics among us] contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it once through, giving the fullest possible attention to each word, without a change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul." 

(Simone Weil, "Concerning the Our Father")

WHO AM I?
I am Tres Sansom. Kate and I recently decided to plant a vegetable garden in our backyard. We decided to start with one raised bed, but plan to add two more in the upcoming weeks. With as many veggies as we've been consuming lately, we thought it might be fun to try to grow our own. As with most of these sorts of things, we greatly underestimated the amount of time, energy and money we'd spend getting the garden set up. :) Thankfully, we've got our first bed finished and planted. Now we wait. As you can tell from the picture, Benjamin wore himself out “helping” us put in the garden.