“He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Lk. 11:1
Do you realize that the words “I,” “my” and “me” do not occur once in the Lord’s Prayer?
Yet while saying “Our Father,” it is easy to mean only “my Father”; to utter the words “give us this day our daily bread” and still think only in terms of “give me my daily bread”; or to make a mental substitution of “forgive me my trespasses” for the actual words “forgive us our trespasses.”
These lines of Charles Thompson may help you avoid the tendency to be self-centered while praying:
You cannot pray the Lord’s PRAYER,
And even once say “I.”
You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer,
And even once say “my.”
Nor can you pray the Lord’s Prayer,
And not pray for another,
For when you ask for daily bread,
You must…
To view this resource, log in or sign up for a subscription plan
