Right off the bat. I have to confess that I am predisposed to the modern Lord’s Prayer. Even better are some of the rewrites I’ve heard in the last year or so. Some really good praying is happening. Tonight, I’m now all in. Here’s why.

Praying with my son.

I used to argue that we can change anything else, just not the Lord’s Prayer. I was convinced, since its the only thing people know by heart, we couldn’t do it to them.

Until I discovered how many actually don’t know it.

And what keeping it is doing to others.

Then I tried it, and found that I preferred it. But the churches I’ve served don’t use it, so I don’t lead it.

How easily those words slip out of my mouth:

Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name they kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen.

Words, so foreign, so strange, so opaque. Yet familiar and comforting. Words of childhood. Old, distant words. Words that aren’t mine. It was the only prayer in the whole book my parents required me to memorize.

Something is different tonight. Something in the air. Something in my heart.

I have been praying the other version from the Book of Common Prayer with my kids for the last few weeks. And tonight, it really struck me. I had forgotten to slip it in between the two songs. I started slowly and deliberately.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your Kingdom come

your will be done

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread

and forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial

and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,

now and forever.

Amen.

It doesn’t rattle off the tongue, it sings off it. It pleads off it. It yearns off it. These are not the convictions of the powerful or the expectations of a people that enact blue laws. It isn’t a prayer for memorizing, but for living. These are the hopes and dreams of a people so beat up, so small. The prayer I want my son to know.

Not a prayer of yesterday, or a prayer that is one Jesus taught some people long dead. A prayer that speaks to GOD’s dream for all of humanity in every age and in every moment. And more to the point, a prayer that speaks to my son. A prayer that tells him that Christ is yearning for more than what we have in this world and compels him to see it, to strive for it, to make that dream a reality. A prayer that isn’t my prayer forced upon him, but a prayer known and accepted

because it is his.

Tonight, this prayer is ours.