Re:Verse passage – Luke 11:1-4 (day three)
“Lord, teach us to pray…”
You might ask why it would ever be necessary to pray that God wouldn’t lead you into temptation. It would seem to go without saying that God would refrain from such a thing. But you could say the same about other components of the prayer: it would seem to go without saying that God would care that people regard him and his activity highly; that heaven would prevail; that God would provide for one’s needs daily; that God would give mercy and forgiveness to human beings. And yet, here’s this prayer asking that God do all these things. If all that goes without saying, why pray? Because you don’t live in an impersonal, algorithmic universe. You live in a personal one. Life proceeds in conversation with this person – God – or it doesn’t proceed at all.
Wow, that last line is incredibly powerful.