Luke 13-1-10

Jesus begins with God. That’s where we too must begin. God knows our needs. He is the source of our life. He is our hope for a better life. He is the Lord of all creation. Only after Christ has focused our attention on God and His kingdom and His will does he turn to our needs.

“Give us each day our daily bread.”

It’s interesting how much Jesus had to say about our physical needs in only one line. That’s all.

Here again is why so much of our prayer life is ineffective. You and I probably spend most of our prayer time on our physical needs. Yet Jesus devoted four times as much time on our spiritual needs as upon our physical needs.

A young man was going blind. “You might as well shoot me,” he was heard to say. “I could never cope without my eyes.”

But many people do cope without their eyes. Many cope without limbs. Many cope in dire poverty. Many cope with the loss of everyone and everything they hold dear. How do they do it? They do it because they discover there’s something more important in this world than that which is physical.

Take Fanny for example. Fanny Crosby was blind. Yet she contended that she was the happiest person alive. She saw an inner beauty, and that’s so much more important than any beauty that our physical eyes can behold.

This is not to say daily bread is unimportant. Jesus taught us to pray for it. God’s will is for our physical needs to be met. How can we be effective servants if our daily physical needs are not met? It’s perfectly legitimate for us to share with God the pressing concerns of our life whether it be making a mortgage payment, or a baby’s fever, or our own aches and pains. It’s God’s will that we share our physical concerns with Him. But our physical well-being is just part of our deepest needs. Just imagine what a difference it would make if we focused on God and His kingdom.

Forgiving someone who has wronged us is tough. No matter how eloquent our prayers are, we cannot be spiritually whole until we’re able to forgive those who’ve wronged us.

Once in a small church, in a small town, toward the conclusion of the service, a trembling woman came forward and sat on the front pew, asking forgiveness. She hadn’t been in that church for several years. The woman who sat directly behind her looked shocked. She grew pale and nervous. Several people in the congregation looked bewildered and wondered if trouble would start all over again; for there had been trouble, lots of it, tragic and heart-breaking trouble; two murders, court trials with opposing families, and one death in the electric chair.

The trembling woman was the mother of the murderer. The woman behind her . . . it was her husband and son whose blood had been shed. What would the second woman’s reaction be? Would she be able to forgive? Fortunately, she was able. She reached forward to the trembling woman, clasped her hand, and said, “I’m glad you have come back to be with us in the church.” This woman whose husband and son had been murdered later commented, “I feel better than I have felt in years. Now I feel free.”

You and I don’t forgive someone for their sake, but for our own. It’s easy to obtain God’s forgiveness. If we’re sincerely repentant, God will surely forgive. But forgiving ourselves and forgiving others, that’s what’s hard.

“And lead us not into temptation.” We are sinners with infinite possibilities for good, but sinners still. All of us need to wash daily in God’s cleansing streams.

“Lead us not into temptation . . .” It’s Matthew who adds, “But deliver us from evil . . .” He will deliver us from temptation if we ask. If we really want Him to. Many of us, however, are quite happy to be tempted. When tempted, let’s pray for His help. His main concern is our best good.

In prayer our focus is on God, His goodness and His love. We can ask for our physical needs but remember our spiritual needs as well as our need for forgiveness, but also our need to forgive and our need to be kept from temptation.

“For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”

It was the early church that added those last lines with which we complete the Lord’s Prayer. But they represent the culmination of everything we believe about this loving God.

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Rev. Charles Eldredge is a member of Maitland Church of the Brethren. He has a Facebook page and can be contacted by email: ce1133 @verizon.net.