2. A Primer on Prayer
R
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Matthew 6:9P
RAYERis the gateway to God’s heart. Who better to open the gate
for us than the Son whom he loved? Who better to give us in-
struction on prayer than the one who lived by prayer, the one who
did only what he saw his Father doing—the one who said only what
he heard his Father saying?
The first line in the Lord’s “primer on prayer” settles several of our
most basic issues of faith. Whose father are we talking to? Is he
someone else’s father or ours? Is he someone we know only from a
distance? Is he a father we can trust and call on in a time of trouble,
or is he some capricious deity who is playing tricks on us? In this
first line we learn that he is our good Father.
I know my human father well. He loves me and takes pride in me.
Whenever I was in a play or a recital, he was there. Mom said he en-
joyed sitting somewhere near the front, and at some point during the