Most of the questions we ask about religion and scripture and theology are really the same question over and over, because all of our questions and difficulties center on the one question of unconditional love and acceptance. In other words, we want to know if God is keeping a light on for us… But the answer we crave, the one that will really set our anxieties down, can’t be found in anything made of words. Even our scripture can only point to the truth, a truth that has to be lived to be believed at a level that transforms. Jesus knows this, of course, and so gives us a model prayer that when understood from the Aramaic context in which it was delivered, becomes a prayer not to be recited in words, but a sequence of actions to be lived out.
Most of the questions we ask about religion and scripture and theology are really the same question over and over, because all of our questions and difficulties center on the one question of unconditional love and acceptance. In other words, we want to know if God is keeping a light on for us… But the answer we crave, the one that will really set our anxieties down, can’t be found in anything made of words. Even our scripture can only point to the truth, a truth that has to be lived to be believed at a level that transforms. Jesus knows this, of course, and so gives us a model prayer that when understood from the Aramaic context in which it was delivered, becomes a prayer not to be recited in words, but a sequence of actions to be lived out.