This essay continues a sequence. Read the previous one here.
(Note: We use the word “meditation” here in the sense of “a piece of writing or a speech which expresses deep thoughts about a subject”, and not perhaps in the sense of Vipassana etc. )
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We Don’t Understand The Word
The fact that, by default, we interpret The Word (i.e. Christ’s Word) as if it was uttered by a human being, and therefore tend to undervalue each of Christ’s sentences, was the subject of We Don’t Understand The Word.
We have had to remind ourselves of this several times e.g. “The Beatitudes“, “Mind Your Language“, “Does ‘Turn The Other Cheek’ Make Any Sense?“, “Giving As Performance: PR or Charity?“, “Ye Must Be Born Again“, “Does ‘Take No Thought’ Make Any Sense?“, etc.
We Don’t Understand The Lord’s Prayer
Obviously, the same applies to the Lord’s Prayer. In “The World’s Most Underrated Prayer, Part 1” and “The World’s Most Underrated Prayer, Part 2” we were able to uncover several valuable (and perhaps surprising) insights contained in each sentence of the Lord’s Prayer.
It became clear that it would be more appropriate to treat each sentence as a self-contained prayer.
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How Is The Lord’s Prayer To Be Used, Realistically?
In light of these findings, and in light of the level of focus required for prayer to have effect (ref. “Law of Attraction: So What?“) we should even go further and state that if we are serious about prayer, the Lord’s Prayer cannot be prayed all at once.
Not only is each sentence/prayer so extensive in scope, but they successively dwell on different matters. For example: do we really believe that we can, within a few seconds, satisfactorily complete a meditation on the Holiness of God (“Hallowed be Thy Name“) and then move seamlessly and instantaneously to a deep reflection on our life goals (“Thy kingdom come“)?
Christ could not have meant it as a single, monolithic prayer to be rattled off daily, as has become habitual/traditional.
The Lord’s Prayer cannot be prayed all at once, and Christ never meant it to be.
Collectively, the prayers give insight into almost every aspect of His Word. The Lord’s Prayer is in certain ways a summary of The Word, of His entire Message, as we demonstrated in our investigations in “The Lord’s Prayer, Part 1” and “The Lord’s Prayer, Part 2“.
It is a set of instructions, a set of insights, a set of meditations that we are to dwell on, each at the appropriate time and in the appropriate circumstances.
They are the Lord’s Prayers1, or perhaps the Lord’s Meditations.
Today’s Resolution:
- We shall seek eternal insights in the Lord’s Prayer, so that we can prayerfully find them.
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