Teach Us How to Pray and Live

Left: Praying Hands (Study of the Hands of an Apostle), Albrecht Dürer, c. 1508. Pen-and-ink drawing, 29.1 x 19.7 cm. Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria, Public Domain.

Right: Self-Portrait (Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight), Albrecht Dürer, 1500. Oil on panel , 67 x 49 cm. Alte Pinokothek, Munich, Germany. Public Domain.

“The Lord’s Prayer” from the album A Family Christmas. Performed by Andrea Bocelli. Composed by Albert Hay Malotte.

“The Lord’s Prayer(It’s Yours)” from the album The Stories I Tell Myself by Matt Maher.

Poetry:

“The Weighing”
by Jane Hirshfield

The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

TEACH US HOW TO PRAY AND LIVE

The practice of praying The Lord’s Prayer is perhaps, of all things, a sacred exercise of remembering.

Remembering we belong to our heavenly Father. We are His children and siblings to one another.

Remembering our heavenly Father is wonderfully, perfectly good. Every moment, in every situation, and in every way, He is wonderfully, perfectly good.

Remembering our heavenly Father reigns eternally and sovereignly over all rulers, principalities, and powers. His will establishes the flourishing of life in all creation.

Remembering our heavenly Father’s unlimited storehouse of supply, providing for our needs now and in the age to come.

Remembering our heavenly Father graciously forgives our sins, compelling us to forgive one another.

Our songs today––two renditions of The Lord’s Prayer, take us to places in our human experience that need always stay connected––adoration and action. In the first, Bocelli’s august performance joined by the ethereal sound of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir lifts us to heaven’s door in sublime worship and awe, while Maher’s earthy street-beat style brings The Lord’s Prayer home “right here in my heart,” influencing my personal everyday decision to forgive.

Similarly, Albrecht Dürer’s Christ-like Self-Portrait connects with Maher’s humble message of “right here in my heart.” Throughout his lifetime, Dürer kept this masterpiece at home in the family’s private collection and never wrote about it in his personal journals or in any of his other writings. Respected as a man of devout faith and piety, this has led some to believe he might have painted the image as a personal reminder to be like Christ in the world. Others add that Dürer might have sought to show Christ reflected in the face of everyman, using his own as the example.

On well-dressed Sunday mornings, while singing songs and reciting the prayer together at church, the command to forgive rings happy and true. But come that storm-cloudy day when the wound of sin cuts deeply, straight through the heart, and the weight of our losses crushes us, the command to forgive feels not only impossible but cruel.

Forgiving leads us to the total surrender of laying down our lives, becoming “the drought-starved eland [who] forgives the drought-starved lion who finally takes her, enter[ing] willingly then the life she cannot refuse, and is lion, is fed, and does not remember the other,” as poet Jane Hirschfield so eloquently and horridly describes.

Jesus’ words haunt me at such times. “Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

Following the way of Jesus, who laid everything down and died with forgiveness in His heart and on His lips, requires nothing less of us. Only in Him, the One sacrificed for us on the cross, do “the scales balance.”

Only in remembering our good Father restores and redeems all things can we be like Christ in the world, awaiting the glorious time and place when all is made new.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you for your perfect love, forgiving us while we were your enemies. Please help us to do the same. We want to be like you. Help us forgive from the heart, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be glorified in us and through us, that the world will know we belong to you because we love one another.
Amen.

Kay Vinci, M.Div.
Writer and editor

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website via the link in our bio.