The Lord's Prayer

As we are searching for a church, Cavett has been joining us in worship every now and then, checking out all aspects from Sunday School, to the bulletins, to the Children's sermons, to the bogs or notebooks offered for entertainment during the sermon.  He has enjoyed the hymn singing and has been trying to read the words and also likes the "rock-n-roll" sound of the praise and worship teams of other churches.  One of his new favorite songs is "We Are Marching in the Light of God" or "Siyahamba."  But, what I had yet to teach him that would be so easy to participate in was The Lord's Prayer. 

Why hadn't I thought of it before?  Well, the words, I just thought they were a bit to hard to understand at this point.  Silly me! Such nonsense.  Our old church back in Houston is doing a whole Lenten series on the prayer and so I decided to make it our Lenten Challenge.  We began repeating each phrase once every night for our prayer beginning Ash Wednesday.  Three days later he was anticipating what I was going to recite.  A week later, he nailed it.  We are still discussing the meaning of each phrase and I am confident that by Easter, he will know the salvation and the love that Our Father has bestowed upon us.  He will understand that God is like a "third parent" who loves and cares for us giving us an example to follow.  As he grows older I hope that He will become more of a friend, a confidant, and a source of strength. 

I'm getting the daily devotionals from our old church still and this past week has focused on "Our Father."  I loved how Tom Pace said it. 

"As children, we learn that the identity and vocation of our parents gives us credibility and a derived sense of worth. As we grow older, we move into a phase in which we believe that it is all up to us, that we need to make our own place in the world, to make our own mark on creation.


Over time, though, the notion of creating our own identity begins to grow hollow. We begin to ache for an identity that is unrelated to our accomplishments, that is defined, once again, by remembering the unconditional love of our parents. This time, though, we come to understand that it is not the love and approval of our earthly parents that give us our real identity. That identity comes from “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
We have the right to say, on the playground of this life, “My father flung the stars into the sky, and he built that mountain over there, and made the oceans, and made a man and a woman out of clay and then brought them to life. What did your dad do?”

I guess next up is the Gloria Pati and the Doxology.  These kids are sponges watch what daily bread you "feed" them.

Art by: Mark Lawrence  "The God of All Grace." 1 Peter 5:10



"But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you." 1 Peter 5:10