Teach us to pray

A word for the week

When his followers asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he did not hand them a technique or a long list of holy phrases. He gave them a short prayer, so short you can say it in twenty seconds, and its very plainness is the first lesson. Before the words, though, he tells them how not to pray. Do not pray to be seen, he says, the way the show-offs do, standing on street corners so everyone can admire their piety. And do not pile up words, heaping phrase on phrase as if God could be worn down by sheer volume. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask. Prayer is not informing God or impressing him. It is a child talking to a father who is already listening.

Then he gives the prayer, and it is worth walking through slowly, because every line is a whole way of seeing. It opens: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Not my Father, our Father; you never pray this alone, even when you are alone. And Father, the word that says God is near and warm, not distant and cold. Then, may your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Before a single request for yourself, you ask that God's good will fill the world, and quietly you offer your own corner of it: let your will be done here, in me, today.

Give us this day our daily bread. Just enough for today, not a storehouse for a year. It is a prayer that teaches you to depend, one day at a time, and to trust there will be bread tomorrow when tomorrow comes. Then, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Notice the hinge in the middle: as we forgive. Jesus thought this line so important that it is the only one he circles back to explain after the prayer ends, warning that if we will not forgive others, we shut the door on the mercy we ourselves need. The forgiven are meant to forgive. You cannot clutch a grudge in one hand and reach for pardon with the other.

And finally: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It is a prayer of humility, an admission that we are weaker than we like to think, that we need to be kept, that we cannot walk the way on our own strength. It does not assume we have got this. It asks to be held.

That is the whole of it. No grand vocabulary, no performance, just: God is our Father, let his goodness come, give us enough for today, forgive us as we forgive, and keep us from evil. Jesus gave it as a pattern, not a cage; you can pray it word for word, and you can also let it teach you the shape of all your other prayers. But do not miss how much is folded into so little. In six short lines he tells you who God is, what actually matters, how to depend, how to be forgiven, and how to be kept. Pray it slowly this week, and mean each line as you go. It is enough. It was always meant to be enough.