Is prayer finding a new place in our lives during the days of COVID? It seems so. And that, of course, is a great thing.
I invite your feedback to some occasional thoughts I’ll share over the next couple of weeks on expanded renderings of the Lord’s Prayer. (I first wrote these in 2015, and just rediscovered them. They have been buried in my personal journal. Perhaps I’m sharing them, not because anyone else needs them, but because I do!) When I say ‘expanded renderings’ my simple intent is to take the main thoughts of each line of the Lord’s prayer and express it more fully, not conscious so much of the form of the original, but of an expanded expression of the meaning.
Each of the renderings are based on a framing of two words. Today’s words are ‘separate’ and ‘coming’:
Our Father who is separate from us,
residing in the heavenly places,
and whose name stands separately from any other name:
The coming of your ruling is our heart cry!
We want your desires to come and find a place here on earth—even though your desires are separate from ours, positionally in the heavens rather than earth! May those two positions be joined as one!
Let daily sustenance come to us.
Take far away from us any relationship bitterness, in either direction.
Don’t let us come to the place where we give in to either ourselves’ or the Devil’s evil desires.
Freddy Boswell 