christian living on The Lord's Prayer

Long Prayers are Not Required As I was perusing my journal I stumbled upon this nugget from Henri Nouwen’s  The Way of the Heart : Abba Macarius was asked 'How should one pray?' The old man...

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...

Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it; it is the petition for forgiveness.

The following story is told about the Chicago Bears’ coach, Mike Ditka and one of his most famous players: One day Ditka was about to deliver a locker room pep talk and he looked up and saw defensiv...

For those who recite The Lord's Prayer on a regular basis, it can easily become a rote exercise. In this excerpt, Edwin Muir is on a pilgrimage when the prayer took on new significance: Last nigh...

My Sunday school class of youngsters had some problems repeating the Lord’s Prayer. One child prayed, “Our Father, who art in heaven, how’d you know my name.”

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...

Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.

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...

Generosity is not strictly for those who have material abundance. Because Oseola McCarty recognized this truth, the world is a better place. Born in 1908 in rural Mississippi, she quit school after si...

The model prayer that Jesus gives them is surprisingly, maybe even insultingly, brief. They ask to be taught to pray. They have sifted through the possibilities of what they want from Jesus. They have...