The Lord’s Prayer (Wesley Hill, 2019)
The Lord’s Prayer
It is hard to pray in our world of advanced modernity, even for those of us who believe in prayer. We are trained to be skeptical, we are busy, love efficiency and have been too often bored by droning prayers that mention everything under the sun but never seem to make much of a difference. Living in the Lord’s Prayer would do us good.
This is what Wesley Hill, professor at Trinity School for Ministry (Ambridge, PA), invites us to do in The Lord’s Prayer. A small format book in which Hill reflects thoughtfully and devotionally on each phrase in turn, we are taken back to basics in order to expand our world. Prayer is envisioned within its cosmic context; our prayers are reimagined in our cultural setting; and our praying is shown to shape us body and soul. “Luther insisted that,” Hill says, “asking for God’s kingdom and will to be made manifest—which they would be, regardless of our efforts—is about stretching our hearts so that we may learn to desire truer, greater realities.”
Book recommended: The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father by Wesley Hill (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; 2019) 101 pages + indices.