<\/p>\n
\u201cPray, then, in this way: Our Father in heaven, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d Matthew 6:9-10<\/span><\/p>\n When I read and recite The Lord\u2019s Prayer, a persistent question unsettles me: <\/span>When I pray, do I expect my prayers to affect anything about my own life?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2013<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine that you and I are friends, and you decided to invite me over for dinner. How kind!<\/span><\/p>\n But, when I arrive, I find that you\u2019ve served seafood. Well, I\u2019m allergic to shellfish (sad, I know). You apologize, of course. This sort of thing happens, it\u2019s no big deal!<\/span><\/p>\n What if it happened a second time? And a third?<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine you kept offering the same invitation: \u201cGraydon, please come over to my house for dinner! I\u2019d love for you to come!\u201d Yet, you never alter the menu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What if you invited my whole family, but you ignored my kids all night?<\/span><\/p>\n What if you invited two of my kids, but you uninvited my third?<\/span><\/p>\n What if you only spoke about topics that disturbed me or badmouthed my oldest friends?<\/span><\/p>\n What if you couldn\u2019t even remember my name?<\/span><\/p>\n Over and over, you told me, \u201cCome to my house, you are welcome here!\u201d But your unwillingness to change and your disinterest in knowing who I am communicate the opposite: I am not welcome, and you do not want me to come to dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2013<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder if God sometimes receives The Lord\u2019s Prayer like this?<\/span><\/p>\n We love to pray for the Kingdom to come while unknowingly setting up barriers to the Kingdom coming. We earnestly pray, \u201cLord, come!\u201d But, then we turn around and live a life repellant to the Kingdom. We go straight from reading Matthew 6 to idolizing money, sex, and power, ignoring injustice, working economically predatory jobs, showing little care to our neighbors, supporting dehumanizing policies, dismissing the plight of refugees, practicing unforgiveness, excluding image bearers of God, baptizing violence, worshiping individual autonomy over self-giving love, and distracting ourselves as much as humanly possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Lord\u2019s Prayer is not about twisting God\u2019s arm to send the Kingdom. God is already willing! The Lord\u2019s Prayer is supposed to get into <\/span>our<\/span> business and change <\/span>us<\/span> to become participants in God\u2019s in-breaking Kingdom.<\/span><\/p>\n So, can the Kingdom of God come over for dinner? Is there space in our lives for the Kingdom of God to make a home?\u00a0 Will we learn to love the Kingdom of God more than the <\/span>idea<\/span> of the Kingdom of God?<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s some good news: the Gospels reveal that Jesus was down for a dinner invite, and he showed up at some unlikely tables. Our shortcomings and hypocrisies are no match for God\u2019s mercy. On the flip side, Jesus was not shy to announce the host\u2019s hypocrisy and injustice. The God of love calls us to be transformed into the compassionate image of Jesus, so injustice simply cannot stay on the table.<\/span><\/p>\n May all of God\u2019s people create hospitable spaces where the Kingdom of God is welcome to dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n RLC welcomes and encourages individuals who engage in critical thinking at the intersection of faith and justice to contribute to our blog. The views and opinions expressed by our blog authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of RLC, its staff, members, or officers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cPray, then, in this way: Our Father in heaven, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d Matthew 6:9-10 When I read and recite The Lord\u2019s Prayer, a persistent question unsettles me: When I pray, do I expect my prayers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1229,182,968],"class_list":{"0":"post-15930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-living","8":"tag-dinner","9":"tag-god","10":"tag-kingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}