The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life was published in 2008 and is a modern meditation on the Lord's Prayer. In exploring the Lord's Prayer, the book takes you below the surface meaning of Jesus's words and his larger teachings to discover fresh interpretations of the metaphors and parables contained in the Gospels. The book's thought-provoking commentary is supported by...
The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life Henry David Thoreau, tucked away in his Walden cabin, famously said that most of us lead lives of quiet desperation. That was in 1845. Today, things are not so quiet in the United States. Anxiety and depression are regular rites of passage from which millions never graduate. Civility meanwhile has long been dropped from our national discourse. It's...
Our Father Who Art In Heaven | Meaning The Lord's Prayer begins with an idea that seems easy enough to understand. Jesus wants to establish God as our heavenly Father, and we as his children. What we often fail to notice though is what Jesus doesn't say. Yet what he leaves out is just as important. What Jesus doesn't say is that we should...
Hallowed Be Thy Name | Meaning Jesus establishes God as a heavenly father figure, but that's not enough for most of us. Without a name, he seems lost in abstraction. Try as we might, we simply can't bring him into view. There is only the vague presence of someone hovering around us—like the adult of a Charlie Brown Peanuts Special, always outside the frame,...
Thy Kingdom Come | Meaning With the second line of The Lord's Prayer, we arrive at the heart of the matter: God's kingdom. To understand how Jesus views his Father's kingdom, we first need to do something that will seem strange. We must take all discussion of "Heaven" off the table. There will be no talk about heaven with a capital "H," the place...
Thy Will Be Done | Meaning In the Book of Luke, there is a curious statement about God. Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah as saying that through Christ (the Lord) all mankind shall see the "salvation of God". ((Every chasm shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be leveled; the winding ways shall be straightened; the rough roads made smooth, 6 And all...
On Earth As It Is In Heaven | Meaning In the last two chapters on the Lord's Prayer, we've established that our entrance into the kingdom of heaven depends on our sense of wonder; our ability to think and love; our patience; and our acceptance of will as a matter of choice — a choice shared equally with God, the Father. We've also learned...
Give Us This Day | Meaning Up to this point in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus has been laying a foundation — one that establishes our relationship to God and his creation. When we recite the beginning of the prayer, we are thus engaging in an act of grounding, reminding ourselves that at the core of our existence we remain rooted in Christ. ((By the...
Our Daily Bread | Meaning Knowing that we can claim ownership of our inheritance in the living hour is one thing. But what are we supposed to do with that knowledge? The childhood keys of wonderment and immediacy help unlock the door to the kingdom of heaven, but they don't have the power to usher us across the threshold. To cross into the kingdom...
And Forgive Us Our Trespasses | Meaning We've just described our journey toward a life in Christ as a rising. But the act of "rising" (such as rising above petty arguments and concerns) can sometimes get us into trouble. The reason is that when we rise toward our divinity, we often look down on others with a misguided sense of superiority. ((Speaking to people...
As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us Removing the hindrances that block the coming of Christ involves more than just seeking forgiveness. It means giving forgiveness, too. And that can be pretty tough sometimes. Christians often think that unless punishments are meted out swiftly and severely our communities will turn into modern day Sodoms & Gomorrahs. In America this fear fuels our continuation of...
And Lead Us Not Into Temptation | Meaning Having led us through forgiveness, the Lord's Prayer turns to temptation. Jesus approaches the subject from a curious angle. He asks us to pray that the Father will not lead us into temptation. "This inevitably causes us to ask: Why would an all-good God lead us to the devil's doorstep? If we believe in the Lord,...
But Deliver Us from Evil | Meaning When pride is overcome, we cure a symptom of our separation from God, but not its root cause. We are like the frog born at the bottom of the well, who is unaware of the larger world that exists beyond the walls of its home. These walls are what psychologists have come to call the ego, and...
For Thine Is The Kingdom, Power & Glory | Meaning The Lord's Prayer began by grounding us in our relationship with the Father, and it ends now by solidifying our faith in that kinship. ((While the final line of the Lord's Prayer is not included in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke's version, we have little doubt...
Our free online book The Lords Prayer for Daily Life was written in a way that we hope appeals to both teens and adults, each group of readers being able to take certain lessons from it, or simply food for further thought. But what about the child? The Lord's Prayer is the kind of prayer that children can learn at a young age, and...
While the Lord's Prayer is the perfect prayer for many occasions and tribulations, it is nice to have other prayers to use---if for no other reason than variety is the spice of life. So, in this post we will share some other prayers which we admire and like to say from time to time. How to Pray When Parting May the road rise to meet...
While we think that it is almost never too early to start teaching the Lord's Prayer to children, it is a little long with some complicated words. For younger kids and children, it is often good to start with a few shorter prayers with easier language. Many of us grew up with short prayers like "Now I lay me down to sleep. I...
Throughout history, the Lord's Prayer has inspired statesmen, philosophers, writers, and even scientists (as can be seen by the famous quote by biologist Rupert Sheldrake). In this post, we have compiled a collection of some of the most well-known quotations on the Lord's Prayer. If you have a favorite quote on the Lord's Prayer that we haven't included in this list, please feel free...
In this article, we will briefly review line by line (verse by verse) various interpretations of the Lord's Prayer, as explained by different authors throughout history. Currently, we are only including the interpretations of John Wesley, Richard Kingsley, Andrew Murray, Helmut Thielicke, and The Living Hour. However, we may add interpretations from other Christian thinkers as time goes by. Please note that this is...
There have been many translations of The Lord's Prayer in hundreds of languages. But the one which perhaps is most fascinating to Christians is the translation in Aramaic, the language which Jesus spoke. The following is an Aramaic version of The Lord's Prayer, the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray, the prayer which is the Rosetta Stone...
Whenever we at the Living Hour think about Russia and the Lord's Prayer, we can't help but also think about the work of Leo Tolstoy. You are likely familiar with Tolstoy's epic novel War & Peace, which many consider the best novel ever written. What you may not know is that Tolstoy is also a prominent figure in the history of progressive Christianity, having...
In today's Living Hour post, we are going to share a translation of the Lord's Prayer into Portuguese. In Portugal, the Lord's Prayer is known as the "Pai Nosso" (Our Father) prayer. Among Catholics, Portugal is well-known as the country of "Our Lady of Fátima," which refers to apparitions of the Virgin Mary which appeared to three, poor shepherd children (Lúcia Santos and...
Originally published in 1989, The New Zealand Prayer Book (created by the Anglican Church in Aotearoa) was re-published in a new version by Harper Collins in 1997. This prayer book was celebrated by clergy and lay people alike for the way it combined the traditional Anglican prayers and forms of worship with the rich earth-based spirituality of the Maori and other Pacific Island...
Renowned architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983) was widely recognized for his unique blend of philosophical fringe-thinking, which combined a love for science with a mystical vision of life and the universe. Fuller once pointed out that legendary scientists like Galileo and Kepler had been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church as "heretics" for abandoning the idea of an anthropomorphic God (i.e....
Saint Thomas Aquinas can certainly be considered among the Progressive Christians of his era, and is admired for the manner in which he attempted to synthesize the philosophy and ideas of Aristotle with the principles of Christianity. Thomas Aquinas also wrote on a wide variety of subjects involving psychology and the human spirit, including the goal of the artist, stating that the test of...
C. S. Lewis (1898 — 1963) was a novelist, poet, and academic, who is well known for his work The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis also wrote extensively on topics related Christianity, including miracles and the problem of pain---the most famous work in this genre being The Screwtape Letters. Baptized in the Church of Ireland, Lewis fell away from his faith in his teens. However,...
We have already shared the esoteric meaning of the Lord's Prayer by Rudolf Steiner, but there are other writers who also have written esoteric interpretations of the Lord's Prayer. One of the most notable is the metaphysical commentary written by P. D. Ouspensky in the early part of the 20th century. The following esoteric interpretation of the Lord's Prayer is from Ouspensky's work The...
We previously have shared some orthodox interpretations of the Lord's Prayer, such as those from John Wesley, Charles Kingsley, and Helmut Thielicke, so as to highlight the differences between their traditional commentary and the Living Hour's more metaphysical approach. While our book The Lord's Prayer for Daily Life is viewed by some as being a little esoteric, it is not so esoteric as the...
As we mentioned in our post on Benjamin Franklin's religious beliefs, the Living Hour considers Franklin to be among the early progressive Christians of the United States, along with other Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the Jefferson Bible) and Thomas Paine. One of our favorite inspirational quotes from Franklin is: "Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement,...
In this Living Hour post, we are going to share some of our favorite Native American prayers. We've chosen prayers and blessings that are short and easy to memorize—thus they can be used as prayers for children as well as adults. Considering the current state of the world, where we seem to be long on war and short on peace, we are going to...