Hi, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.
Today, we continue praying the Lord’s Prayer. We will focus on the word “heaven” from the phrase, “Our father in heaven.” First, the whole prayer:
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial,
And deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, now and forever,
Amen.
Our Father in Heaven,
Today we address you as our Father who lives in heaven. But as Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple, “Will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you…” (1 Kings 8:27, ESV)
When we pray to you in heaven, we remember that “In the beginning, you created the heavens and the earth.” Your scope of activity is not limited like ours, to a short time on a small planet in a big universe. You made time and space, and you sustain it all. We are less than a heartbeat in the ages of time, less than a grain of sand on the shore of the oceans.
We take our place under the heavens, under the heaven in which you dwell. Here we are servants of time, as it marches us onward to death. But we feel that you have put eternity in our hearts.
We are servants of place, which limits where we go and how we get there. But we feel you have called us out of this place into the Kingdom of Heaven, where you are the ruler and where you are not ruled by place.
We are servants of the world, for here we labor and eat and sleep and sorrow. But we hear you call us to heaven where you will wipe away every tear, where death is no more, where the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be our shepherd, where he will guide us to springs of living water.
Oh Lord, we hear your call from afar. We look beyond our meagre, scrabbling lives to the heaven where you dwell, to the wider life to which you have invited us. A life where righteousness trumps politics, where love is more important than money, where being is valued above image, where truth is honored above lies.
Our Father in heaven, we ask you make us good citizens here on earth for the few years we spend here, and we ask you to prepare us to be good citizens of your eternal country.
Amen.
I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me.”
Pray with Me 