Our Father in Heaven...

The first three petitions of the Lord's prayer are Holy be Your Name, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done. Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will. The start of this prayer challenges us to move away from an inward self-focus. To pray in this way is to make three important statements that help focus us on God and God's ways before we add our own ways to the equation.

"We are not used to this," Peterson says. "We have a lifelong habit of starting with a "want list" developed while we are preoccupied with just getting across the street. Indirectly but implicitly, the three petitions renounce want lists: wanting to be "like God," wanting to use God as an assistant as we take control of "our" kingdom, wanting to get access to the so-called secrets of prayer (the blueprints) in order to pursue our own wills, our willfulness.

The three petitions reorient our lives, our imaginations, and our language to the presence and action of God. If we stick to this long enough, make a habit of it, slowly but surely our congenital self-centeredness is radically re-formed into God-centeredness. (Tell it Slant, Peterson, 181-82)."

By starting here, with these three petitions (God's name, kingdom, and will) Jesus teaches his disciples where the centre of their orientation and formation takes place. It can be hard to start here when I have so many things on my own want list and my to do list. But, this re-orientation is necessary because it is there that we find our strength, direction and the ability to move forward as we pray for and discover our daily bread, God's will on earth, forgiveness and deliverance. And so we pray, Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done....