Over the next couple weeks I want to invite you take a journey with me through the Lord’s Prayer.  If you come along, I think you’ll find the experience both faith-building and encouraging.  I thought I’d make this invitation because very often on long runs I’ll pray and reflect on a phrase of the Lord’s Prayer during each mile and it’s helped me immensely.  You don’t need to run, though, in order to pray!  My hope is that if you choose to take this journey with me, you’ll enter into this Prayer as if for the very first time.  And you can carry it with you through the whole day!

Here’s how we’ll do it:

I’ll post a daily reflection on each phrase.  Don’t feel bound in any way to pray exactly as I do, just use my reflections as a sort of “jump-start” for your own prayers.

Also, these are obviously not the exact words I pray while I’m chugging down the road, and every time I pray this way the words and concerns come out a little different.  Sometimes I find myself praying for certain parts of the world or for certain situations in the church, or for certain relationships I’m challenged in or blessed by.  My only purpose in giving you these actual reflections is to help you see how God can lead you through the prayer.

Lastly, I want you to notice the communal aspect of the Lord’s Prayer.  Stop yourself—really—from focusing solely on your own needs and concerns.  Always begin by asking God to lead you as you pray.  Then notice Christ’s emphasis on “our” and “we” and “us.”  Think about God first and foremost (“we” don’t even come into the picture until “give us this day our daily bread”).  Until then it’s all God and His Kingdom!  Even when it comes to forgiveness, think of ways our nation has sinned, of how our communities are mis-guided, and use the opportunity to pray for our leaders.  And then, of course, throw in your own sins too—but notice how confessing your own sins right alongside those others changes your perspective!  We begin to see how grievous our “small” sins of envy, greed, etc. can become when taken to a larger scale.

I’ll pray through each of the phrases a mile at a time, but why not take one or two minutes (or five or six!) in the morning before starting your day?  Or before going to bed at night?  Why not go for a walk and pray a phrase from light post to light post?  Be creative about how you pray!

I love the Lord’s Prayer because it gives me a form to pray through.  Otherwise, I just drift from worry to worry, or I “wake up” to find myself thinking about something totally irrelevant!  I’m too scatter-brained to pray well—I need order and structure in order to be more faithful in prayer, and praying this way has helped me immensely.

So please come along and just give it a shot, but if you find this too structured for you, if it feels to mechanical or forced, just leave it and find some other way to pray!  Remember, the form helps me, but it’s not the form that counts, it’s the conversation it allows me to have with the Father.

Let’s get started—and let me know how it goes (even if it doesn’t go “well”)!

OUR FATHER

I thank You, Lord, that we have a Father in heaven and no mere impersonal force or power.  You know us inside and out, more thoroughly and deeply and profoundly than we even know ourselves. You made us, shaped us, called us into being.  With intention and foresight, you gave us life and breath.  Like Adam, you formed us and breathed life into us.  We are made in Your image and likeness, a mystery none can fully fathom.  You have called us into being for Your own purposes and for Your own glory, not our own.  You name us and affirm us.  Each of us is gloriously different from all others, and You rejoice over our very existence.  We are made for You and we cannot fully know ourselves until we know You.  You reach out to us and save us from all our enemies, from those other created beings who would do us harm, and from those spiritual powers that would hinder our growth in and pursuit of You.  You are our Shield and Defender, our Maker and our Redeemer, our Healer and our Master—in all things related to us You are Father indeed.

I struggled for a long time over whether or not to go for a run this morning.  I looked at the weather to see how windy it was, and how windy it would be tomorrow (“will tomorrow be less windy—maybe I should wait till then”), and what will that do to my miles for the week.  The bottom line:  I just didn’t feel like it.  In fact, I really (no, really) didn’t want to go.  As I often do in such situations, I asked myself: “When I go to bed tonight, which choice would I like to have made?”  Still, I struggled.  Then I heard a small voice in my head (don’t know for sure if it was also a still voice too or not—probably just me) say, “If you don’t go now, you aren’t going to go.”  So I went.

I know many people who live life more spontaneously than I do.  And sometimes I give myself grief for not living more like that.  After all, isn’t it freer, simpler—“Won’t you be happier and more free-wheeling if you just relax already and take the easy road?  Why work so hard?  If it’s that hard, why fight it?  Aren’t you just fighting against yourself?  Just be who you are!  This isn’t really what you want, is it?”

Well, yes, it is.  Because the battle isn’t really over what I want to do and what I don’t want to do.  It only appears that way.  You see, the man I want to be, the Christ-follower I think God has called me to be, would go out on that run.  That’s the man I’m striving to be.  The “me” that wants to stay at home and veg truly is the “me” I am today.  But he’s not the man I’m becoming.  I choose to live as that man; otherwise I’ll never become him.  That man isn’t simply and solely a work of God—he’s a product of my own choices and commitments.  (Granted, my will and my desires originate as God’s gifts to me, but they are no less shaped by my own efforts—or lack thereof.  I will not just wake up one day to find myself the man God intends me to be without to some degree living as that man today.)

This doesn’t mean I have to fight myself at every turn.  It also doesn’t mean that what I don’t want must be what’s good for me.  It’s simply a recognition that the “me” I’m becoming is someone better, stronger, nobler, more courageous and more faithful than the “me” I am today.

I want to be that man.  So, in the end, did I do what I wanted to do?  You’re darn right I did, and it was the hardest thing I’ve done today.  Tomorrow’s things may be harder, but I’ll be better equipped to choose rightly and well then because I won this small fight today.

Today’s fight?  No big deal.  No one would ever know or care if I had stayed home.  And that makes me wonder:  How many fights like these are going on all day every day in other people’s lives?  I know there are many.  And I know many of them struggle and lose—because that’s been me before too.  I want the losses to be the exception, though, not the rule.

Genuine wisdom and discernment are called for here, too, because I could make this a law if I wanted to.  I could decide that every time I struggle to make a decision I’ll do the hard thing, the thing I don’t really want to do.  But this isn’t a law, it’s a battle to become someone, to become a whole person, a man who not only honors Christ but reflects Christ.

I can only make that decision tomorrow because of what I’ve learned today.  I know pretty well where and how I struggle, and I know what temptation looks and feels like (well, much of the time!).

Here’s one of the temptations:  Tell everybody else that this is the choice they should make too.  It may be, but it very well might not be.  I can’t even tell myself that I should make this same choice every day.  As I said, this isn’t a law.  If that’s the case, how can I know which choice to make on any given day?  Because the choice isn’t about running or not, or eating or not, or buying those clothes or not.  The choice is whether or not to be the man or woman Christ is calling me to be.  Will this choice, whatever it is, lead me closer to, or farther from, that man?

The easy thing for me is to choose laziness (many of those who know me will push back here, but trust me).  For others, the easy thing is constant activity, perpetual busy-ness.  Whereas I may need to get up and do something, the activist may very well need to just stop it and sit down, or even just go to bed.  That could be at least as hard a struggle as my decision to run this morning was—and I mean that.

You are not becoming me.  Neither am I becoming you.  But perhaps instead of living by the law we can live by the principle that in order to be the person I want to be when I wake up in the presence of Christ, I may have to choose something in this moment that runs contrary to what I want to do in this moment.  I’m willing to sacrifice this moment for eternity—now there’s a principle to live by!  Not a law, or a rule, but a guide.  And the beauty of it is that you and I, however differently we’re wired, can both live by the same principle without necessarily making the same exact cookie-cutter choices.

Every English teacher has pet peeves.  One of mine (just one–there are many!) is “things.”  It’s fine when you’re drafting because your job then is just to get it all down in a place where you can set to work on it.  But there’s no excuse for it in a final draft.  “Things” is lazy; it’s a sign of carelessness.  What “things” are you talking about–ideas, pencils, values, flowers?

I recently shared a video I found on Facebook (thanks, Ned Berube!) of an interview with Bono and Eugene Peterson.  At one point, Peterson observed that we need to find a way to cuss without cussing.  Hmm…

Just this morning (the best ideas are the ones that not only stay with you but that you find yourself processing over the coming days), I discovered a parallel between cussing and my fretting over “things.”  It’s just this:

Cussing is lazy.  One of Bono’s and Peterson’s other observations was that they wish Christians were more honest in work, art, music … life in general.  Cussing is just surrendering to the frustration or anger of the moment.  Granted, it’s often emotionally charged, which precludes thinking very consciously, but it’s also most often automatic and thoughtless.

Again, I know that, as Clyde Kilby noted, “You can’t kiss your girl and think about it at the same time” without ruining the experience of both!  Go ahead–live the heat of the moment, but don’t let it be a substitute for a vomit-fest that engulfs everyone around you.

What if, the next time you get frustrated with your spouse, friend, government or boss, you really thought about not just venting but forming your reaction into a response that invites others in rather than elbows them out of the way?  What if you thought deeply enough about how to best express the intensity of your experience that you wound up both reconciled to the other closer to them?

What if, the next time you find yourself angry with God or disillusioned with your state in life or spirituality, you framed a prayer that sincerely and honestly named what you were feeling and offered it to God?

If the psalmists can do it, so can we.

Prayer, by Hans Urs von Balthasar, that is.  I had heard of this book for several years, but never really had the time or opportunity to look it up.  Recently, I came across a reference to it in a book by Eugene Peterson and thought (once again), “I need to check this out.”

This book has stirred quite a lot of reflection in me over the last couple weeks, and this post is not so much about what von Balthasar says as a general reflection of prayer—then we can get into his stuff.  Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait!

Prayer is about what is traditionally known as contemplative prayer.  A better way to understand it, though, would be “listening prayer.”  The first thing that comes to mind for most of us when we think of prayer is intercessory prayer (essentially, praying for others), praying for our own needs, or praying about concerns throughout the world.  All of these, while necessary and important, will inevitably become misguided and aimless if not informed by contemplative, listening, prayer.

We need to know how to pray, but we usually just dive in.  The problem with this is that the initiative lies with us.  We see a problem, and pray about it, seeking God’s help and intervention to resolve the issue.  This makes God our servant.  Instead, we ought to see the problem, listen to God (“Where are you in this situation, Lord?  What do you want to do?  How do you want to intervene, serve, love, heal, forgive, redeem here?”), and then join our prayer with His plan and purpose, invoking His presence and ushering His reality into existence in the here and now.

Only when we invite God into our circumstances do we even begin to see the multitude of possibilities that arise there.  It is actually possible that God desires, even longs, to see something far more profound and powerful accomplished in, through and around us than we intuit in the moment.  This is the reason so few of us see answers to prayer—we’re simply not praying in line with what God is up to.

Our first instinct is to fix the problem, and this is very often the result of our own discomfort with someone else’s pain (or our own—sometimes our “prayer” is more about alleviating our own discomfort than the person’s we’re praying for!).  Next time a need arises, look first to God and make your first prayer, “Lord, how are you at work here?”  Offer the situation to Him and look to see what He is making, and wants to make, of it.  Then, when you join your prayer to the situation, you become a vessel through which Christ’s love (grace, mercy, forgiveness, healing, redemption) can flow into the life of another.  How can we know which of these is most needed unless we first look to see where Jesus is at work?

Apart from genuine listening, prayer devolves into an exercise in seeing our own will done rather than God’s.

There are any number of metaphors we can use to describe our experience of walking with Christ.  Jesus Himself used numerous metaphors and stories (parables) to describe the kingdom of God.  Obviously, this is because no one single metaphor or image is sufficient to contain all the kingdom of God is.  The kingdom of God, being more transcendent, more glorious, more majestic and more holy than any other kingdom, must by definition be not only beyond but infinitely beyond any conception of word or image we use to describe it.

I think each of us, though, has a primary metaphor or image through which we relate to God and by which we understand and enter into our walk with Christ.  For me it’s running.  But not just any kind of running—there are sprints, dashes, repeats, relays, intermediate runs and marathons (even ultramarathons for really crazy people!).

The marathon is for me the dominant metaphor of my life with Christ.  Running a marathon is all about endurance, and my experience of life has taught me not only to value but to pursue endurance.  Without it, I fall short of God’s plan for who He designed me to be.  Endurance is not who I am, though; it’s a necessary trait or discipline for becoming who I am.

Every marathon runner experiences life on a number of levels.  First of all, the race itself is just the end of a much longer period of planning, training, perseverance and sacrifice, which are integral to finding oneself fit and ready at the starting line on race day, as well as finding oneself fit and ready at the starting line.

Secondly, every marathoner experiences pain, trouble, grief, and exhaustion.  The marathon surpasses the half-marathon, for example, in that, at some point, usually around 20 miles, your body runs out of fuel.  Sooner or later you find yourself completely and utterly tapped out.  There are numerous ways to delay this, but make no mistake, it’s coming—that point at which you’ve reached the end of what you’re capable of on your own and in your own power.  Yet there are still miles to go.  This is where training comes in.  Training teaches your body how to keep going in spite of pain and difficulty.  Training shows you where your limits are, and then helps you extend (but not eliminate) them.  Training teaches you to keep going when you want to quit—and wanting to quit always happens before you need to quit.

And lastly, every runner needs sustenance along the way.  As I said, run a marathon and you’re going to reach the end of yourself.  The trick is to delay that moment as long as possible, not because your goal is to avoid suffering at any cost, but because the whole aim of running a marathon is to finish well.  So we replenish fluids lost during the race and stock up on quick energy to get us a little farther down the road (the slow-burning energy was built up in the week before the race ever began).

Suffering, pain, sacrifice, difficulty, and obstacles, both expected and unexpected—all these are part of my story.  And all these find a newer, deeper level of meaning for me when I run.  From my earliest years, the question lingering just beyond consciousness for me was, “How will I survive this?”  I never realized it at the time, of course.  Hardly any of us recognize the question at the core of our being much before the middle of life somewhere.  For you it’s probably an entirely different question.  Underneath all the layers of my life, though, behind my childhood shame, behind my adolescent aimlessness, behind my desperation and longing, behind my desire to be recognized, affirmed and valued just for being me, behind my frustration with singleness, behind my struggle against cancer, behind all of this the question, “How will I survive this?” has tugged at me.

Running has taught me that suffering, pain, sacrifice, difficulty and unforeseen obstacles are not hindrances to walking with Christ—they’re to be drawn up into walking with Christ.  In fact, they don’t find their true, ultimate meaning until they’re drawn up into Christ.  Waiting for them to be over, or asking God to take them away, misses the point entirely.  We must offer them to Christ, make them a sacrifice of praise, burn them on the altar of devotion and humility, celebrate them as the reminders of creatureliness (and in some cases, fallen-ness) they are.

So—what’s the question burning at the core of your soul?  It’s there.  It always has been.  And what’s the image or metaphor or symbol that helps you find its meaning?  It’s there too.  Ask for the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it, and the One who sees all and hears all will reveal it to you in His own time and His own inimitable way.