Dear Friends in Christ,
As you receive this, we will already have begun our Lenten journey. This year as we gather on Wednesday afternoons and evenings for midweek services we are spending some time with that most familiar of prayers that Jesus taught us: The Lord’s Prayer.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember when I memorized that prayer. It wasn’t intentional, I know that for sure. It just came from week after week of repeating it: surrounded then and now by others who learned these words in the presence of people like you. While there certainly are many who don’t count this prayer as their own, I find that usually its words are known by those who gather at hospital bedsides and at gravesides --- for many repeat them along with me speaking from their heart’s memory, too.
And yet, I know it so well, sometimes I hardly hear it anymore. I don’t take time to wonder at the “Our Father” --- which implies that we are brothers and sisters, you and I. And that we are invited to address God as someone as near as a parent. I don’t pause to reflect on the times I have treated God’s name as less than holy. I don’t think about how radical an idea it is to ask for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth. And I don’t stop to enumerate those I haven’t forgiven, even as I ask God to forgive me.
And so it’s worth standing still in this familiar prayer again this season. We’re called to go deeper into words we know by heart to mine their meaning for us anew. Please join us as we dig deep into each petition, claiming it for each new day in our journeys of faith. By God’s gift and grace, may it become more deeply your prayer this year --- and for the rest of your life.
Peace to you and many blessings,
Pastor Janet
