Our Father, Which Art in Heaven

In just a little over 24 hours will be our Christmas Eve service and joining me and Deana Gurney will be Julie Thompson, Todd Glacy, Kim Leighton and Reign Hart. In this time of COVID-19, most of us will be home Christmas Eve and many will be missing their children, parents or other favorite people that normally would be celebrating with them tonight. Our hope is as your spiritual family we can bring a little Christmas cheer your way.

Sunday’s message was looking at the most popular version of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus, our wayshower and teacher, was quite clear in teaching about prayer. He said that prayer is a private exercise, and we should go into our closet and pray. I found this interesting that most houses in Jesus’ time had a small room called a prayer closet because so many generations lived in one house there was no private place to pray.

Author of Jesus of Nazareth Gunther Bornkamm makes some interesting observations about the Lord’s Prayer, as does Rocco Errico, author of the Aramaic Light on the Gospel of Matthew.

Here is a tease of what we learned…“give us this day our daily bread” is not a petition for food, although bread was the main staple of food in Jerusalem. It is instead a petition for trust, trusting God to provide each day everything that I need.

The second line of petition, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” Rocco calls canceling of debt. My mentor Rev. Edwene Gaines said about forgiveness if you are still in a body you have forgiveness work to do. There is a great illustration on how to untie from someone you are holding non-forgiveness toward. You might find it helpful, just saying. There is much more, so I encourage you to watch the video of this service.

My friend, if you can’t join us on Thursday evening, I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

You are a blessing in my life,
Rev. Patricia Bessey