After having opened our prayer by expressing our longing for God’s kingdom and honoring his promise to restore the world, we are now ready to ask him to provide for our needs This is the third line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” In this time between Christ’s first and [ Read More ]
It has been said that harboring resentment is like ingesting poison and then waiting for the other person to die. Indeed, resentment rots the soul. It causes the soul, and in some ways the body, to wither on the vine. Thus, if we wish to keep our souls vibrant and our bodies healthy, we must [ Read More ]
The second line of the Lord’s prayer is, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Or, in paraphrase, “Please send your Son soon to set the world to rights, so that we can live under your loving reign, with no more sin or suffering, and in the context [ Read More ]
The first line of the Lord’s prayer is, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Or, in more contemporary English, “Our Father in heaven, holy and wonderful and beautiful is your name.” It functions as the opening salvo of a payer that proceeds to instruct us on how to savor and honor [ Read More ]
During the last year, I have begun reciting the Lord’s Prayer, slowly and meditatively, twice per day. I find this habit to be supremely helpful in shaping my thoughts and actions throughout the 24-hour period. I offer this series, therefore, to elaborate on why this habit is so meaningful for me and how it might [ Read More ]
We live in a fallen world in which we are sometimes exposed to terrifying events. Experiencing or witnessing those events can cause severe psychological trauma. However, we can be comforted in knowing that the God who experienced a traumatic crucifixion on our behalf is with us in the midst of our trauma, and that he [ Read More ]
I’m going to ask you to, um, trust me on this: some of the people you think you can trust—whether friends, family members, clients, bosses, political leaders, or romantic interests—are fundamentally untrustworthy. It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way, and one that I wish to pass on. The common wisdom is that the only [ Read More ]
In the first installment of this two-part series, we explored the first part of the Serenity Prayer with an eye toward learning to live without anxiety. After all, Jesus exhorted us, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put [ Read More ]
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” -Jn 14:27 During the course of my 47 years, persistent anxiety has been one of the things with which I’ve wrestled the most. From childhood, I found myself anxious in situations where it seemed most other people were not. I knew that this was [ Read More ]
One of life’s greatest challenges is learning to deal with people who are draining, unsupportive, difficult, and adversarial; with people who are bent on systematically diminishing—and even finally destroying—your inner life. And, given the teeming ecosystem of toxic people laid before us in history and public life, how can we go about identifying the archetypal [ Read More ]