Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

There are whole books written on the Lord’s Prayer which we find in our Daily Office Gospel this morning! When Christians say this prayer together they do several things - we pray in words that Jesus prayed, recorded and passed down, we recognize the power of God in the past, present, and future, we join in a way of praying that has meant so much on good days and bad and is present in just about every liturgical service and tradition imaginable, we pray for forgiveness and forgivingness. In recent years though I have heard the “our” with particular resonance - Our Father, which makes us siblings - no matter what age and stage, no matter where we live or what we do. This shared identity shapes how I see others and how they see me, not rooted in all of the other ways we demarcate ourselves but instead as members of the same generation in a way. I think of the Communion of Saints in kind of the same way, those who have gone before being in some way are the same generation in the family of God. Children who hope and believe and struggle and try again, whose identities are rooted in the same divine love that does not run out.

In Christ,

Mtr Taylor