The first words of the Lord’s Prayer are striking: “Our Father.” In our individualistic society, these two words invite us into something radical—our shared relationship with God and one another. They remind us that prayer is not a solitary act, but a communal one in which we all participate. We do not pray alone, but we pray as part of a vast and diverse body, bound together by God’s grace. When we pray, we pray with others.
This may sound surprising, but it is central to Christian prayer. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “When you pray, say: “Our Father.” The English language, unfortunately, doesn’t distinguish between the singular and plural “you.” But in the Greek, Jesus uses the plural “you.” He is not addressing one person—he is addressing the community. When you all pray, say, “Our Father.”
Prayer, then, is a communal act. It is a sacred act in which all of God’s people participate—across time, across space, across every boundary we’ve built. Even when we pray in solitude, we are doing so with others. We join many voices–the living and the departed and all creatures, the joyful and the grieving, the hopeful and the despairing. In prayer, we bring the world to God.
To most of us, this is a major shift. We are conditioned to think of God in personal terms, I pray, I go to Church, etc. in fact, we treat our spiritual lives as private property. But God cannot be possessed like a house or a car. God is not a private deity. God is our God together. And when we pray, we carry the whole world with us into God’s presence—the brokenness and beauty, the pain and the promise. This world is in God’s hand, and we are taught to lift it to God in prayer.
So each time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, remember that it is not just about you. It is about us. It is about God who loves this world—all of it. It is about those you love and those you struggle to love. It is about enemies and friends, neighbors and strangers. It is about our shared humanity before a gracious Father.
And because we share this God, “we are bold to say, Our Father…”
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From the E-Crier of May 8, 2025. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter.