A Very Famous Prayer...

Jesus told his Disciples that, (Luke 11:2-4)
"When you pray, say:
" 'Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.

3 Give us each day our daily bread.

4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.' "


There are lots of cool things about this prayer, but I want to mention a few...

~Hallowed is an old word meaning something like praised worship or set apart as special...

~God's Kingdom... is a really hard to nail down idea... but I think it means something really cool here. I think God's kingdom coming is refering to God's desire to restore all things to his plan.

In the Garden of Eden humankind rebelled against God's plan and they have been rebelling every day since.


This is what we do when we sin...

God's original desire, or plan, for how things were to be, was messed up by us.

Our rebellion created all of the suffering and pain and death that is in the world, but God wants to restore the beauty and life of his original plan.

His "Kingdom" exists anywhere where God's desire for how things are to be is how things actually are...

In Heaven, things are the way God wants them... and Jesus prayer is that Earth would also be restored to the way that God wants it to be....


That might all be really confusing... but the simple truth is this: Whenever we do something beautiful or true or lovely... whenever we are selfless instead of selfish... whenever we help others, or whenever we obey God...

Then we make Earth more like God wanted it to be... and his "kingdom" comes a little bit more.

Are you making earth more like God wants it to be? or are you/we making earth less like God would like it to be....

This is hard to understand... what do you think about it?