Lord's Prayer
Matthew 5:9-13 (NIV)
"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."
The first time I heard of the words "Lord's prayer" was from Brian's talk about slice of his life. I am pretty sure I have read this part in the Bible before, but I didn't know that there was a specific name for this prayer.
C.S.Lewis pointed out in "mere Christianity" that by saying "our Father in heaven", we actually put us in the place of Jesus Christ. If we start with pretending to be the son of God, it is very likely that the pretendence will be turned into a reality by the help from God.
But how is it different from what those hypocrites do? It sounded like doing good deeds will lead you to the right path. However, I am sure it's not what Lewis meant. It is the heart that should be dressed up like Christ.
During one of our lunches, Brian explained to me the meaning of each sentence in Lord's prayer, which did solve one of my puzzles. I was quite confused by "your will be done" because I didn't realize "will" here is a noun.
To me, "Give us today our daily bread" delivers the message that we should not worry too much about the future. As said in Matthew 25-34, God is taking care of our daily needs. We only do what we ought to do today, which is quite ironic, because I really should write the paper right now, while I prefer spending time on talking about God.
"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" is very important to Christianity. It can also be presented as "love our neighbor", or even "love our enemy". If we fail to do that, we will not be forgiven by God either.
I used to think that God's forgiveness to us is unconditional. Well, it's still unconditional if "unconditional" means that God will forgive us no matter what kind of sins we commit. However, we need to forgive others' sins first.
How exactly do we forgive? In his chapter "forgiveness", C.S.Lewis talked about how we should love people who have nothing lovable about them. Like we love ourselves. Like God loves us. I have read that chapter at least twice. I understand what it was said there, but I don't know if anyone would ever be able to do that besides Christ.
As I am reading "the journey of desire", it is quite interesting to me the relationship between the desires, the hope and the temptation. Apparently the last one is a bad thing, since it says "lead us not into temptation". Deisres could be good, which are put into our heart by God. As said in that book, we should only hope for what we desired. But there are also disowned desires, possibly caused by temptation.
Currently I clearly know that I desire to learn about God. I wish I had more time to read those books and talk about him with friends, though sometimes I doubt if it's one of my desires to procrastinate from my research. Anyway, I count it as a good one.
For most of my other desires, I asked God to work on me so that they can be removed. And he answered. Although this will be a winding road and my mind will become restless again, I feel much more comfortable now because I know I am not by myself and He loves me.
"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."
The first time I heard of the words "Lord's prayer" was from Brian's talk about slice of his life. I am pretty sure I have read this part in the Bible before, but I didn't know that there was a specific name for this prayer.
C.S.Lewis pointed out in "mere Christianity" that by saying "our Father in heaven", we actually put us in the place of Jesus Christ. If we start with pretending to be the son of God, it is very likely that the pretendence will be turned into a reality by the help from God.
But how is it different from what those hypocrites do? It sounded like doing good deeds will lead you to the right path. However, I am sure it's not what Lewis meant. It is the heart that should be dressed up like Christ.
During one of our lunches, Brian explained to me the meaning of each sentence in Lord's prayer, which did solve one of my puzzles. I was quite confused by "your will be done" because I didn't realize "will" here is a noun.
To me, "Give us today our daily bread" delivers the message that we should not worry too much about the future. As said in Matthew 25-34, God is taking care of our daily needs. We only do what we ought to do today, which is quite ironic, because I really should write the paper right now, while I prefer spending time on talking about God.
"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" is very important to Christianity. It can also be presented as "love our neighbor", or even "love our enemy". If we fail to do that, we will not be forgiven by God either.
I used to think that God's forgiveness to us is unconditional. Well, it's still unconditional if "unconditional" means that God will forgive us no matter what kind of sins we commit. However, we need to forgive others' sins first.
How exactly do we forgive? In his chapter "forgiveness", C.S.Lewis talked about how we should love people who have nothing lovable about them. Like we love ourselves. Like God loves us. I have read that chapter at least twice. I understand what it was said there, but I don't know if anyone would ever be able to do that besides Christ.
As I am reading "the journey of desire", it is quite interesting to me the relationship between the desires, the hope and the temptation. Apparently the last one is a bad thing, since it says "lead us not into temptation". Deisres could be good, which are put into our heart by God. As said in that book, we should only hope for what we desired. But there are also disowned desires, possibly caused by temptation.
Currently I clearly know that I desire to learn about God. I wish I had more time to read those books and talk about him with friends, though sometimes I doubt if it's one of my desires to procrastinate from my research. Anyway, I count it as a good one.
For most of my other desires, I asked God to work on me so that they can be removed. And he answered. Although this will be a winding road and my mind will become restless again, I feel much more comfortable now because I know I am not by myself and He loves me.
posted by beneathwing at 9:37 PM
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