Daily Reflection
of Creighton University's Online Ministries
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March 11th, 2014
by
Maryanne Rouse
Heider College of Business
Click here for a photo of and information on this writer.
Tuesday in the First Week of Lent
[225] Isaiah 55:10-11
Psalm 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19
Matthew 6:7-15
This is the seventh day of Lent 2014; it may find you settled into a plan for reading, prayer, almsgiving, service or a combination of these and more.  Or you may still be awaiting a call to spend Lent in a special way that you have yet to hear. Finally as is often my experience, life delivers a happening that demands my earnest reliance on God for solace that only God can provide.

We never know when God will beckon.  For example, today’s Gospel in which Jesus does a basic thing:  He tells the apostles, “This is how you are to pray.”   So He begins the Our Father, which despite its familiarity most often presents some phrase on which to cling for inspiration.

Yet, perhaps today offers an opportunity to learn a bit more about this most common of prayers.  For example, there is a book that can be found on the Internet, The Lord’s Prayer in 500 Languages,  comprising the “leading languages and their principal dialects throughout the world.” A huge testament to the fact that Christians have taken to heart Jesus’s instructions.  And if it has been a good source for all of those many, perhaps for us.

There have been any number of adaptations in English written perhaps to fit more culturally a variety of praying Christians:  Native Americans, Africans, and an interesting, Internet also “Alternative Versions,” that includes the New Zealand Prayer Book; from Mark Berry of the Emerging Church Movement, that ends with a Postscript after the Amen: “ May our future actions grow from here!” Also included is a “retranslation” from the Aramaic that begins: “O Breathing Life, your Name shines everywhere!”

The one that captures my interest for prayer today, another from this collection, “from Dominican Sisters Retreat, March 1993, Great Bend  Kansas.”

Prayed with alternating sides:
Side 1:                                                 Side 2:
Our Father                                         Our Mother
What art in heaven                           Who are in all the earth
Hallowed be thy name                      Holy is your truth
Thy kingdom come                           May your wisdom come
Thy will be done on earth as           Your circle be one uniting
It is in heaven.                                   Heaven and earth.

Give us this day our daily bread.     Give us today a nurturing spirit.
And forgive us our trespasses        Heal through is as we ourselves are healed.
As we forgive those who trepass
against us.
Lead us not into temptation                        Lead us into Fullness of life.
But deliver us from evil.                   And liberate all that is good.
For Thine is the kingdom                 For the Wisdom, the Power and the Glory
                                                            Presence and the Goodness are Yours
                                    Now and forever.   Amen.

May God and you find freshness together in your Lenten journey!

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