Messengers

I’ve been reading in book of Joshua and learning more than I thought I would about God’s character and about what my response to God should be. For instance, in Joshua 5 and 6, God gives the order to conquer Jericho. So Joshua goes out to look at Jericho and runs into a mighty warrior with a drawn sword. At first Joshua doesn’t know what to make of this warrior. He asks, “Are you with me or with my enemies?” The warrior answers, “Neither. I’m with God.”

Then the warrior tells Joshua how God wants Israel to proceed in conquering Jericho. The passage doesn’t tell us what Joshua’s initial response was but if it had been me, I’d probably have laughed and thought it was a joke! The soldiers of Israel were to walk around Jericho once a day for six days. Just march around the city (the city was about 700 yards around, so it would be possible to have the whole of Israel’s army walk around the city within a couple of hours). On the seventh day Israel would walk around the city seven times, play trumpets and shout. Seems silly, but that’s what the messenger/warrior from God told Joshua to do.

And it worked. The walls of Jericho fell down and the Israelites were able to go straight in and conquer the city.

Sometimes I feel like God sends me messengers with ridiculously silly “suggestions” for me to follow. God puts wise and godly people in my life to help me know the best ways to proceed. Sometimes the suggestions I get are simple, so simple they seem ridiculous. But they are also, usually, practical. And they work. For instance, one “message” given to me was to get enough (eight hours) sleep. Another was to get up at a working-person’s time (6:30 a.m.) to start my day off. Another was to get my sunlamp out and set up now that the days are getting shorter again. All are simple. All are things that would not seem to make much difference in my normal fall depression. But when I follow the suggestions, it works.

The Lord's Prayer, Simplified

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In my daily Bible reading I came to the passage (Luke 11:2 – 4) where the Lord’s Prayer is given to the disciples, who had just asked Jesus to show them how to pray. I was impacted by the simple way The Message put the key phrases. I say the Lord’s Prayer so often – at AA meetings, CR meetings, in church – that I’m not sure I really pay attention to what the words are saying. I need to pay more attention and one way of doing that is by reading the passage directly from Scripture – and using a variety of translations and paraphrases to give the familiar passage some freshness.

Below I’ve put side-by-side two versions of the way Jesus told us to pray.

TRADITIONAL                               MESSAGE

Our Father, who art in heaven          Father

Hallowed be Thy Name                   Reveal who You are

Thy kingdom come, Thy will          Set the world right

        be done on earth as it is

        in heaven
Give us this day                                Keep us alive with three 

        our daily bread                                 square meals

And forgive us our trespasses          Keep us forgiven with you

        as we forgive those                          and forgiving others

         who trespass against us

And lead us not into temptation      Keep us safe from ourselves

            but deliver us from evil               and the Devil

You can decide how the simplified Message version brings new life to this very familiar passage for you. For me, it reinforces the basics of my prayer life: Praising who He is. Ask that His will be done on earth. Ask for our physical needs to be met. Ask for forgiveness. Ask for insight as to whom I need to forgive. Ask for His protection over our spiritual lives.

Are you taking time to remember who God is? What is God asking you to pray about? Who is God asking you to pray for?