Devotion for the Week

… week of July 27, 2025

Our Prayer

The disciples’ request that Jesus teach them to pray reveals a touching vulnerability. Jesus responds with an invitation into a prayer brimming with gratitude and expectation for the care and intimacy of the divine Parent. While the Lord’s Prayer may be familiar, each time we pray it, it still possesses the grace to speak a new word to us and draw forth a desire we were not aware of. Martin Luther felt that Christians who prayed the Lord’s Prayer each day, or even portions of it, could be certain their prayer would be more than adequate.

The Lord’s Prayer is not the prayer of an individual but of a collective. The prayer begins with “Our Father,” not “My Father,” and petitions God to address our hunger, our sins, and our practice of forgiveness. Prayer of all kinds, including the Lord’s Prayer, is not simply a private conversation between God and an individual, but a unique harmony in the immense choir of those set free in Jesus. Every time we turn our hearts to God in prayer, we do so with and alongside the entire body of Christ.

It’s easy in our culture today to dismiss prayer or to trivialize it as empty wishes. And when prayer is offered as a cynical gesture in response to real pain and suffering, such dismissal seems understandable. But the truly countercultural nature of our prayer is our trust that God receives and responds to our praise, petition, and lament, that our persistence and perseverance in prayer are not in vain. The God who gives us our daily bread, forgives us our sins, and saves us from the time of trial hears our prayers animated by the trust that God will be faithful and will keep God’s promises. This prayer then becomes for us a spark of hope that guides our daily action and our faith that God is making all things new and inviting us into this redemptive work.