Several Sundays ago at the church I attend, a sermon was dedicated entirely to "The Lord's Prayer," which has had me thinking much more deeply about the content of this prayer, or more precisely, the meaning and intention behind this content. To think about The Lord's Prayer is to think about the notion of prayer itself: why we pray, how we are to pray, and what we are to pray for. As Jesus says in the Matthew's gospel, as a preface to the Prayer itself, we are not to pray in the presence of others to be seen and praised by them, but are to pray in secret, in the presence of God (Matt. 6:5-6). Jesus says, "your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (6:8), which sometimes makes us wonder about the nature of prayer. But He continues:
Pray then like this:
"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from [the] evil [one.]
[For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen]."
(Matthew 6:9-13, ESV; additional content of some manuscripts given in brackets)
Because Scripture is living, we can never drink of it deeply enough and will continue to see more in its words the more we read them. And who can begin to comprehend the deep mystery of experiencing God through prayer? That said, I humbly offer this brief meditation on The Lord's Prayer (as much for the writer as for the reader):
Our Father in heaven,
The Lord God is our one true Father, for which our flesh-and-blood fathers are a metaphor. Loving fathers deserve our respect and seek our love by building us up in their own; and how much more is our loving Father above deserving of honor and love! "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Our Father is in heaven, because heaven is in Him. Where He is, there can only be heaven. We have heaven in our hearts when we have Him in our hearts, and when we are free from "this body of death" and nothing separates us from Him, we can only be with Him in heaven, with heaven in Him.
hallowed be your name.
His name is honored and holy--and not only holy, but the name from Whom all holiness is conferred. His name for Himself is a statement of His fundamental and ultimate existence, and it is the statement from which all things have existence: "I AM" (Exodus 3:14; Psalm 90:2; John 8:58). His name is above all names.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
In heaven, His dwelling place, His will is always done, and it is only His will that is done. Desiring God is desiring His Kingdom, desiring His return, desiring heaven on earth, and desiring that His will be done on earth. The belief of this statement in our prayers renews His presence in our hearts; because if we treasure God's Kingdom, God's will being done, how can our hearts be anywhere but in Him? "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34).
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
What is our daily bread except those things the Lord knows we need? Our needs are met in Him, because He is sufficient. We know we are in need of nothing when we remember to submit all our concerns to him and drink deeply of His truth, goodness, and beauty (Matthew 6:33). He knows us better than we ourselves do, and He knows our needs better than we ourselves do. He meets all our needs if we keep our eyes fixed on Him, and as we fix our eyes on Him we are "casting aside all that entangles and the sin that so easily ensnares" (Hebrews 12:1-2), dismissing hypocrisy in favor of practicing what we preach, "removing the log from our own eye" before we claim we can point out the speck in the eye of another (Matthew 7:5); and the more often we practice what we preach, the more often we put others before ourselves and our faults before theirs, the more humble and forgiving--and Christlike--we are: "The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Matthew 23:11-12).
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
When we desire God's presence, we necessarily desire the strength--not our own strength, but strength that comes from Him--to avoid temptation, to take off the deceitful desires of our "old self...and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God...and give no opportunity to the devil" (Ephesians 4:22, 23, 27). As we pray, we are increasingly conformed to His image, and as we are increasingly conformed to His image, our old self's tendency toward evil becomes our new self's repulsion from it.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
The Lord God is the be-all and end-all, the Great "I AM," "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Revelation 22:13). He is the sovereign King of all; His power is such that He spoke all that is into being and sustains all that is by His will; and His overwhelming beauty is The Beauty, of which all things beautiful are a symbol. The Beauty, but so much more: He is the source and the referent of all things true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). To Him be the kingdom, power, and glory, forever.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Only God can make a tree ...good.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31, ESV)
The Bible begins with the book of Genesis, and Genesis begins with God creating all things and observing it to be good. The first chapter of Genesis is emphatic on this point, as it records God seeing what He had just created as good at seven various stages of creation (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). What is this "good"? "Good," in its adjective form is defined by Oxford American Dictionaries (so it is called on my computer's built-in application) as "to be desired or approved of" and defined in its noun form as "that which is morally right; righteous." Similar to the latter, a third definition for the adjective form is "possessing or displaying moral virtue." Could it be that God's good creation is not only desirable and met with approval but also moral and right? Is this absurd?
When we look at nature, we are often awestruck. Nature might even be the paragon of that which the word "awesome" embodies, at least in the material sense (and again I turn to the dictionary): "extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear." Could nature also be the paragon of "good"? After all, God is good, and God, even more than nature (i.e. since he is supernatural), embodies "awesome."
Some of us believe the realm of matter to be at odds with the spiritual realm, taking the sinful corruption of "the flesh" to mean even a corrupt quality in the corporeal: Heaven versus Earth, body versus spirit. Plato considered ultimate reality to lie in abstraction, not the physical, material world, which he believed was a hindrance to reality (as the body is a prison of the soul, to use an example of his). I say in reply simply this: How, then, is nature so beautiful, so stirring? Why does my soul yearn at a sunset? Might I actually be yearning for the "good" that I see? Nature evidences God's goodness.
Perhaps nature does more than evidence God's goodness. Nature might be the one thing uncorrupted, the one created thing that is perfect, that is perfectly actualized in God's goodness; and so it is God's very goodness, instilled by God to make His supreme goodness, His glory, seen in the sunset and the distant mountain, heard in the ocean's crashing waves and the rustling of leaves, smelled in the fresh air of the countryside, tasted in the fruits of trees, felt in the warm summer evening breeze. Suppose the many poetic Scriptures on this subject--the words of the psalmist, exhorting all of creation to praise God (Psalm 148), of Jesus, remarking that "the very stones would cry out" if not for His followers' worshipful praise (Luke 19:37-40), of Paul, giving account of all creation yearning for God's will to be done regarding His followers' ultimate union with Him--suppose these Scriptures are not metaphors but are literal.
Consider the tree and how good it is, how moral, how perfect. Consider nature, the work of God's fingers, and recognize His goodness there, how it praises God in ways perceived by all of our five senses, making nature itself praiseworthy. But consider how its praises to God are also God's display of His love for us, that we might, by looking at nature, look from nature to Him, loving Him in return:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)
The Bible begins with the book of Genesis, and Genesis begins with God creating all things and observing it to be good. The first chapter of Genesis is emphatic on this point, as it records God seeing what He had just created as good at seven various stages of creation (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). What is this "good"? "Good," in its adjective form is defined by Oxford American Dictionaries (so it is called on my computer's built-in application) as "to be desired or approved of" and defined in its noun form as "that which is morally right; righteous." Similar to the latter, a third definition for the adjective form is "possessing or displaying moral virtue." Could it be that God's good creation is not only desirable and met with approval but also moral and right? Is this absurd?
When we look at nature, we are often awestruck. Nature might even be the paragon of that which the word "awesome" embodies, at least in the material sense (and again I turn to the dictionary): "extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear." Could nature also be the paragon of "good"? After all, God is good, and God, even more than nature (i.e. since he is supernatural), embodies "awesome."
Some of us believe the realm of matter to be at odds with the spiritual realm, taking the sinful corruption of "the flesh" to mean even a corrupt quality in the corporeal: Heaven versus Earth, body versus spirit. Plato considered ultimate reality to lie in abstraction, not the physical, material world, which he believed was a hindrance to reality (as the body is a prison of the soul, to use an example of his). I say in reply simply this: How, then, is nature so beautiful, so stirring? Why does my soul yearn at a sunset? Might I actually be yearning for the "good" that I see? Nature evidences God's goodness.
Perhaps nature does more than evidence God's goodness. Nature might be the one thing uncorrupted, the one created thing that is perfect, that is perfectly actualized in God's goodness; and so it is God's very goodness, instilled by God to make His supreme goodness, His glory, seen in the sunset and the distant mountain, heard in the ocean's crashing waves and the rustling of leaves, smelled in the fresh air of the countryside, tasted in the fruits of trees, felt in the warm summer evening breeze. Suppose the many poetic Scriptures on this subject--the words of the psalmist, exhorting all of creation to praise God (Psalm 148), of Jesus, remarking that "the very stones would cry out" if not for His followers' worshipful praise (Luke 19:37-40), of Paul, giving account of all creation yearning for God's will to be done regarding His followers' ultimate union with Him--suppose these Scriptures are not metaphors but are literal.
Consider the tree and how good it is, how moral, how perfect. Consider nature, the work of God's fingers, and recognize His goodness there, how it praises God in ways perceived by all of our five senses, making nature itself praiseworthy. But consider how its praises to God are also God's display of His love for us, that we might, by looking at nature, look from nature to Him, loving Him in return:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)
Thursday, December 17, 2009
In God's Image
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27, ESV)
All people are made in God's image. What does it mean to be made in God's image? Surely the implications are manifold. But I see one facet of the question as concerning what we alone have in common with God, and all those things that set us apart from the other forms of life. Some things that come to mind are knowledge, consciousness, and individuality.
Thomas Aquinas's thinking on the concept of infinity is novel to me, but very sensible. In his explanation of God's infinitude, Aquinas does not see infinity as a matter of unlimited quantity but of transcendence; God is not "more" than everything but rather, in His simplicity and primacy, He exceeds classification, exceeds potentiality (i.e. He is unchanging), is above all things. According to Aquinas, man too has a sort of infinitude in his intellect, his ability to know things, because although we cannot know all things, our immaterial knowing transcends the material, the physical, exceeds any quantity of anything quantifiable. Our knowing is in the image of the First Knower.
Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it very well when he says that what we each call ourselves, or more accurately, our own self, ("I") is in the image of what God calls Himself ("I AM"; Exo. 3:14). The reasons for this are also in God's image. No one other than the individual himself can call himself "I," says Kreeft, which makes the name a private one, and the individual's ability to have awareness of--and in turn, relationship with--himself, identifying himself as "I," is in the image of God: in the image of His consciousness (i.e. self-awareness) of and relationship with Himself.
The divine name "I AM" even implies something more; it implies Being itself. Aquinas says that God's existence is His essence; His being (be-ing) identifies God completely. " 'I AM THAT I AM' " (Exo. 3:14, KJV). God sanctified man from beast in creating him (i.e. male and female alike; Gen. 1:27) by making him a little being, a human being. Our being is in the image of His Being. (It is not the same as His Being, however, because our being (our existence) does not identify completely who we are. That we are is corrupted by what we are, precisely because unlike God, that we are is not what we are. That which makes us what we are is confined to space and time, confined in this earthly existence to the flesh, where sin can enter.)
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27, ESV)
All people are made in God's image. What does it mean to be made in God's image? Surely the implications are manifold. But I see one facet of the question as concerning what we alone have in common with God, and all those things that set us apart from the other forms of life. Some things that come to mind are knowledge, consciousness, and individuality.
Thomas Aquinas's thinking on the concept of infinity is novel to me, but very sensible. In his explanation of God's infinitude, Aquinas does not see infinity as a matter of unlimited quantity but of transcendence; God is not "more" than everything but rather, in His simplicity and primacy, He exceeds classification, exceeds potentiality (i.e. He is unchanging), is above all things. According to Aquinas, man too has a sort of infinitude in his intellect, his ability to know things, because although we cannot know all things, our immaterial knowing transcends the material, the physical, exceeds any quantity of anything quantifiable. Our knowing is in the image of the First Knower.
Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it very well when he says that what we each call ourselves, or more accurately, our own self, ("I") is in the image of what God calls Himself ("I AM"; Exo. 3:14). The reasons for this are also in God's image. No one other than the individual himself can call himself "I," says Kreeft, which makes the name a private one, and the individual's ability to have awareness of--and in turn, relationship with--himself, identifying himself as "I," is in the image of God: in the image of His consciousness (i.e. self-awareness) of and relationship with Himself.
The divine name "I AM" even implies something more; it implies Being itself. Aquinas says that God's existence is His essence; His being (be-ing) identifies God completely. " 'I AM THAT I AM' " (Exo. 3:14, KJV). God sanctified man from beast in creating him (i.e. male and female alike; Gen. 1:27) by making him a little being, a human being. Our being is in the image of His Being. (It is not the same as His Being, however, because our being (our existence) does not identify completely who we are. That we are is corrupted by what we are, precisely because unlike God, that we are is not what we are. That which makes us what we are is confined to space and time, confined in this earthly existence to the flesh, where sin can enter.)
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