Thought for the Day – Our Father

Stuart Holloway’s Thought for the Day is a reflection on what it means when we say ‘Our Father’ in the Lord’s Prayer

With Scarlett and Harvey, I’ve been reading a book about prayer. One of the sections talks about the Lord’s Prayer and breaks it down, working through all the key elements.

As I’m sure you all know, the Lord’s prayer begins ‘Our Father’. Something we are all familiar with doing. What this phrase does is it moves us into the category of children. Not just simply God’s creation but his children.

This means he’s not indifferent to us. It also means that Jesus is our brother. And so this phrase brings us intimately into the heart of God’s family. And that should make us feel loved and valued and secure, even in troubling times like these.

Even if you don’t have a good father experience, we all know what a good father ought to be like – someone we can turn to and trust and get help and provision from.

In the book, it helpfully takes us to 1 John 3:1 to drive the point home. And friends, if we can view God as that type of father, as OUR father, will it not be a delight and a joy to pray to him and to draw near to him. The very thing we ought to do at this time. We are to pray ‘Our Father’ because that’s what God longs to be to us.

And the whole point of this command from Jesus is that we begin to absorb the reality of who it is we are praying to., every time we fold our hand or close our eyes.

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