Spinning around the Lord’s Prayer today…it begins with, Our Father…

“Our Father…” Both ours, and a Father, (so the brother and sisterhood of all) the first two words of Jesus’ prayer. Jesus establishes true spirituality on a fatherhood relationship.

Reality is only knowable through loving relationship, is one hidden premise in this prayer! We have inherited a relational way of knowing. We are adopted into a family metaphor-so we know, through intimate relationship. That’s our epistemology!

If you set up the whole cosmos as a child to father relationship, you change everything. It implies a loving relationship of formation. Not a relationship with a principle but a Person. It’s not a merging, but a relationship. It’s a collaboration! This requires left and right brain engagement-a whole person encounter to know! Not just cause to effect, but parent to child, as the core metaphor of how things actually are.

It implies that the universe is not cold hearted. We enter a child to parent metaphor at the very start of the Lord’s prayer. Not just monotheism, but friendship with a Father figure who is Love, and particularly in love with us each.

The next line tell us to “hallow” His Identity, His Name is whole or to be hallowed. He is One, and is making us one! Comforting start to the Lord’s prayer. The core metaphor in the book is about fatherhood, and entering into that orientation towards the universe. Kids with a loving Father above us who wants relational transformation with us. To parent us in short.

It’s a relational epistemology from the start of the prayer! Great beginning of a prayer! Who you address firstly, and with what level of intimacy, tells much of the story of your spirituality! Jesus addresses Father. That recalibrates the universe into a parent to child metaphor! Still, such a powerful prayer, worth going through line by line in prayer!