The Lord's Prayer I

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name. Matthew 6.9 

When we pray, at least as Jesus taught us, we are to begin our prayer with an address and with worship.

Our address is an intimate expression of a relationship. When Jesus taught us to pray to our Father, it wasn't a formal or unfamiliar greeting. The idea of calling God Father was completely foreign to the disciples. God was seen as being far away from humanity. He was not someone that you could know personally. When Jesus suggested that we address God in this way he was offering us the opportunity to have a personal, familial relationship with God. Think of saying 'Our Father' in the same way that you would say "Hi, Dad!"

Perhaps the hardest word in the Lord's Prayer is hallowed. After all, no one uses that word anymore. It has become archaic and subject to misinterpretation and misunderstanding.  Let me offer some suggestions to help with that.

• Hallowed comes from the same word as Halloween, which is All Hallow's Eve, the night before All Saint's Day.
• Hallow also shares the same root as holy, holiness, whole, wholeness and holistic. Being holy is more than just a spiritual experience for a few Christians. It is the desire of God that all his children be "whole" and "holy."
• God serves as our example for holiness.

Finally, it is crucial that in our prayers we recognize who God is and offer our praise and worship to him. That is what it means to hallow God's name. I challenge you today to love God and worship him.

Prayer: Lord God, you are great and holy. I offer to you my love and honor. You are great and greatly to be praised. You are high above me and all that I know. I am humbled in your presence. Speak to me, O God, and make me like you, holy and whole. Amen.