Encouragement

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“Master, teach us to pray!” begged some disciples of their Master.
The Master replied them with a story of two boys who were strolling through a farm when they saw an enraged bull charging after them. Running towards the fence, the disciples realized that they would not make it.

In great desperation one of them shouted, “Quick, say a prayer!” The other shouted back, “I not know any prayer except what mummy says before meals!”
“Go ahead, any prayer will do!” screamed the first boy. The other cried, “Lord, make us truly grateful for what we are about to receive!”

Abraham’s prayer

Some four thousand years ago, a tribal leader prayed for his people. Abraham, “remained standing before the Lord” in prayer. He shows us what prayer is. It is a “dialoguing face-to-face with God”

Prayer is a heart to heart dialog

For effective dialogue, each party should know each other. No doubt, God knows Abraham; and Abraham seems to know the heart of God. He echoes the conviction that “Yahweh is just” and would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if it meant destroying the righteous with the guilty.

Like a child to father

Thus, like a child begging for favors from its mummy or daddy or like an auctioneer lowering the prices of items to be auctioned, Abraham comes down from 50 to 45, to 30, and finally to just 10. Two points of Abraham’s prayer call our attention; First, Abraham’s faith in and familiarity with God. Secondly, he prays not for himself, but for others.

Jesus’ prayer

Some two thousand years ago, Jesus taught his disciples to pray. They had seen Jesus praying fade into the shadows of night and the obscurity of hills to spend endless hours in communication with Abba, His Father. Prayer comes naturally from hearts. And so they ask him to teach them to pray.
“The Lord’s prayer” is the shortest and yet the loftiest of prayers. Jesus simply tells us to call God Abba, meaning daddy, or father. Every Jew would have shrunk from calling God “Abba”, since it was too intimate an appellation for Yahweh.

Ingredients of “Lord’s Prayer”

Praise, worship, hope, surrender, contrition, confession and petition are the ingredients of the prayer that Our Lord taught to us. Opening with praise and worship of God, we pray, “May your kingdom come!” The stress is on “your” and nor “my”, which is what today’s self-seeking society tells us to strive for.

We also pray for our daily bread- not ‘my bread’ alone, but for bread for all those who die in the hungry deserts of Africa and dig for scraps of food in the garbage bins in India.

The plea for forgiveness reminds us that our forgiveness of others does not earn God’s forgiveness for us, but is the condition of our continuance in forgiveness.

Finally, there comes the request for protection from “temptation”. It is a term for Messianic woes. It is a request to strengthen us when trials and tribulations come our way.

When to pray? Prayers effortlessly emerge from our lips when it gets dark or when bulls charge after us. Prayer is a constant effort. That is why Paul says, “Pray constantly!”(1Thess.5: 17). If struck for words, let us but say, “Lord teach us to pray!”

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