74 – Morning Prayer/Evening Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

For several weeks we have been considering the form or pattern our daily prayer can take.  We have thought together about “formal” prayers as found in the Daily Office and liturgy and we have considered a pattern prayer might follow as outlined by W. E. Sangster.  Last week as I thought about these forms or patterns I realized another way to think of this is as a model for prayer and then it hit me.  We need to look at what some call “The Model Prayer” and is most often called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

I am not interested in our dissecting The Lord’s Prayer to analyze it “parts” but I am interested in our spending time with it and noticing not just the words but the form it encourages our prayers to take.  If we let this be the pattern of our praying, what would we “pray about” that perhaps we now are not praying, and what might we now be praying that we might pray less if this model prayer was taken seriously as a model, a guide, a pattern, an encouragement for our prayers.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth,  as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and he power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.

Amen.


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