Hi,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighborhood monk-in-docs,
Joining you for another Lectio Divina meditation and contemplation audio.
And this one's one that I dreamt up not so long ago in response to thinking about how often we say the Lord's Prayer,
But how little we probably think about it.
It's interesting as probably the most well-known of all the prayers of Scripture and Christian tradition,
The Lord's Prayer,
Which is the prayer that Jesus taught the disciples during the Sermon on the Mount and features in both Matthew and Luke's Gospel,
Is one that most people can recite,
Even those who have little to no connection to Christian church life.
And yet even Christians who have recited this prayer so often have probably not spent enough time thinking about what each section of the prayer actually might mean to their lives.
And so in this Lectio Divina,
That's exactly what we will do.
We'll start and finish by praying through the Lord's Prayer as a whole,
But then rather than spend two or three sections of time praying over a whole chunk of text,
What we're going to do is to break the prayer into separate sections and spend a minute or two just reflecting on what each one of those might mean for us.
And this is a Lectio that you could probably come back to quite often,
For I'm sure that each time you listen to it,
Another part of the prayer or even another part of just one line will speak to you and Spirit will draw you to it and cause you to spend some time reflecting on it.
So I invite you to pause now,
To stop,
To get comfortable,
To breathe in and out.
And we'll spend a moment in silence and then we'll begin by praying through the whole of the Lord's Prayer and that each section.
And may the Spirit of God lead you to hear,
To think and to allow to seep deep into your heart that part of the prayer upon which you need to meditate on today.
Amen.
Let's begin.
Our God 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 and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom,
The power and the glory are yours now and forever.
Amen.
Our God 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 and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom,
The power and the glory are yours now and forever.
Amen.
Our God 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 and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom,
The power and the glory are yours now and forever.
Amen.
As we are reflected on the prayer that Jesus taught us,
Help us to carry that part of the prayer that we need into our day with us now.
May that part of the prayer change the way we think,
Change the way we act and change the way we live so that this prayer which Jesus so wanted us to pray becomes a reality in and through us.
Amen.
God bless you and may grace,
Peace and love go with you,
My friends.
This day and every day.
Amen.
Until next time,
Bye for now.
