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Good morning. Once a week I have school dinners at our
church primary school in Islington. It’s great fun, good food and full
of life. After the meal, children who want to write prayers come to the
prayer corner, in the covered courtyard. Some ask me how and what to
pray, others copy some prayers from a book. This hour or so is one of
the most precious in my whole week. The children know that when they
post their prayers in the prayer box, I take them home and pray them in
our prayer room in the vicarage. Nobody sees the prayers except God and
me and they know that. They can be honest. Their prayers keep me earthed
in reality. Some are poignant and heart wrenching, some are carefree and
light hearted, some are very funny. But all are real.
When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them
the Lord’s Prayer. At the beginning of Lent, for the next six days, we
shall be looking at phrases in this wonderful prayer. It begins with an
address and a longing: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’
We’re so used to the phrase ‘our Father’ that we miss how radical it was
on Jesus’ lips. This way of addressing God in prayer, ‘Father’, was
unique to Jesus in the Judaism of his time. And now he shares the secret
with his friends. In his mother tongue, Aramaic, the word for Father
‘Abba’ is both intimate and respectful. We pray that God’s name – his
real character – will be respected and treated more and more as holy.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’ Amen.
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