background on The Lord's Prayer

We are people of desire. We want things. We long for things. It is primal to our nature to yearn. As Saint Augustine reflected, “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is o...

While I don’t agree with late professor and scholar Marcus Borg on significant theological positions, I appreciate how he described the context surrounding Jesus’ new paradigm of kingdom living: In hi...

Martin Luther, whose actions sparked the Protestant Reformation, recommended a very manageable start to the day. He wrote: “In the morning when you get up, make the sign of the holy cross and say: In ...

The Lord’s Prayer is designed to help us make this change: a change of priority, not a change of content. This prayer doesn’t pretend that pain and hunger aren’t real. Some religions say that; Jesus d...

At the heart of [his prayer for daily bread] stood a central biblical symbol of the kingdom: the great festive banquet. Which God has prepared for his people— The whole point of the Kingdom…isn’t abou...

The Lord’s Prayer, like all prayer, is part work and part rest, Perhaps the only work we do is getting ourselves there. Once we’ve gotten ourselves there—to prayer—whatever mains of productivity is Go...

Medieval Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, specifically the fourth petition (“give us this day our daily bread”), points out several ways that our own...

There are a great number among the Christian people, who, in the Lord’s prayer, when they pray, “Thy kingdom come,” pray that this day may come; but yet, nonetheless, they are drowned in the world: th...

In her engaging work, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the nature of The Lord’s Prayer: To borrow from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lord’s Prayer is our “yes to God’s earth.” The Lor...

Seventy-one percent of Americans pray regularly. Even atheists backslide from time to time. I read somewhere (but I find it hard to believe) that a whopping 20 percent of agnostics and atheists sheepi...