Reading: Luke 11:1-13

‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This request from the disciples is my request also. How should we pray? What should we pray for? What are we really doing when we pray?

Jesus responds in this reading from Luke by teaching them a new prayer, The Lord’s prayer. This prayer is said every Sunday in churches around the world. What I find surprising is how well it is still known in the wider community; perhaps a hangover from early days in Sunday school or Religious Instruction at school. At weddings and funerals the words seem to come to those present like an ancient memory revisited. It is the one prayer worth remembering and worth sharing in community because it says it all really.

I am often called upon to pray publicly; to begin a meeting, to give thanks at a meal, to give solace in a pastoral situation and most times I admit to feeling inadequate, even fraudulent because I’m not sure what I’m doing is real or true. Interestingly, I find meaning and deep significance when I pray on behalf of the gathered congregation in worship. That is because I sense the divine presence in the gathering of the faith community and I experience it in them living out confession, forgiveness, thanksgiving and intercession.

Prayer then for me is engaging in a life centred on loving as Jesus loved and being in constant communion with the source of that love, the Divine.

Rev. Chris Howard
30th July, 2007