The Lord’s Prayer
So many things one could talk about prayer.
Like, why do we have to tell God what he already knows anyway?
What strikes me in the prayer, is that, after noting the holiness of God and the glory of the Kingdom, we very soon arrive at the mundane: “Give us each day our daily bread.”
So high maintenance, every day praying for just enough, I was hoping for a one-off prayer that solved everything.
It brings to mind the story of Moses and the people of Israel being fed by manna from heaven, which they needed to collect daily, as told in Exodus 16, which included the following interaction:
19 Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
God’s gift of manna needed to be fresh, you couldn’t store it up and live on yesterday’s portions, similarly with our faith and our prayer.
In the Graham Kendrick song “The Servant King” the refrain invites us “to bring our lives as a daily offering”.
The request for this day’s needs in the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, is a reminder of the need to maintain the ongoing dialogue of faith, we can’t live off yesterday’s faith.
Ricky Beswick
Lay Preacher