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Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy 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.

Prayer for the Day Ahead

Who can tell what a day might bring? Therefore, gracious God, cause me to live every day as if it were to be my last, for I cannot know not that it not. Help me to live this day as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

Prayer for Personal Conduct (from 1 Timothy)

Lord God, I pray that this day my conduct will be like that you have set for your clergy: Above reproach. May I be this day temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, and not violent, but gentle. May I never be quarrelsome, always seeking peace even in disagreement, and may my love be for you and my fellow man, not for money. I pray that I manage my own household well. If I have any children in my charge, I pray to that I may take the time to see that they are in control and behaving with proper respect. Grant me a good reputation with outsiders, so that I will not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil. This I pray through my Lord Christ, whose love and attention ever gave us an example of conduct,

Benediction

Now, oh Lord, I pray that you may lift up the light of your countenance upon me, and give me peace; in my going out and in my coming in; in my sitting down and my rising up; in my work and in my play; in my joy and in my sorrow, in my laughter and in my tears; until that day comes which is without dawn and without dark.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

Christian Martyrs in the Coliseum, Gustav Dore ca. 1870.

Exodus 20:13 (Young’s Literal Translation)

The Sixth Commandment

Thou dost not murder.

Notes on the Scripture

This phrase is rendered in just two words in the original Hebrew: "never murder". The King James translation, "thou shalt not kill", simply got it wrong. If one reads the Old Testament, interpreting this as a general prohibition against taking human life cannot be correct, anyway. Those who would argue against the death penalty, for example, need to look to the New Testament for their arguments.

Just to be crystal clear, Daily Prayer does not advocate for or against, or take any position concerning, capital punishment or any other political controversy. Our purpose is to read what is written without preconception, to derive the meaning from the Bible, rather than imposing our own biases upon it. One might very well take a personal position against the death penalty from the teachings of Christ, but the issue is complex, involving issues of one's personal conduct as opposed to one's influence on secular society. It is very clear, however, that the commandment itself, in context, forbids “murder” and not “killing.”

eading Exodus, we study the law of Moses, and not just the Ten Commandments. The attitude towards taking human life is quite different from most of modern Western society. God prescribes the death penalty for numerous offenses. In the early history books, He allowed and even encouraged what we would call genocide. In the conquest of Canaan, where a city chose to fight against the Israelites, the Israelite army was generally commanded to kill all the men (although they might take women and children as "plunder"). (Deuteronomy 20:10-18) In other cases, however, heathen women and children were also put to the sword. (E.g. Numbers 31:7-18) Saul, the first King of Israel, actually lost the favor of God by not killing every breathing inhabitant of Amalek, and was thus replaced by David. 1 Samuel 15.)

This raises a very basic issue of the origin of morality. Atheism has no regard for human life. It has no moral source. When Christ came along, the civilized world was the world of Rome, and the Romans certainly had no concept of any inherit sanctity in human life! This is an almost exclusively Christian concept.

Over the course of 2000 years, the prevailing Christian culture of Western Europe has, with painful slowness and difficulty, implanted the idea that killing people is immoral. It has sunk deeply into our cultural fabric.

One of the great stupidities of atheist thought is that this regard for human life will survive without its anchor to God. Probably a majority of the people in the west are post-Christian atheists. They will tell you that murder is wrong, but they have no concept of why they believe this.

And, in point of fact, where Christianity is repressed, regard for human life disappears. Three words prove this beyond argument: Mao, Stalin, and Hitler (in approximate order of number of people killed), who collectively have at least 100 million deaths to their credit.

We hold the lives of others as sacred because Christ tells us to do so, not because we are naturally good or moral. God is always right. If He told the Israelites to kill all the inhabitants in a town, He had a good reason. We cannot understand God's plan.

But here, at the dawn of morality sometime prior to 1000 B.C., God forbids us from committing murder, that it, an individual decision to take another human life for our own purpose. This has not changed, and there is never an exception in the Bible, Old Testament or New.

Daily Inspiration

“ The Perpetual Spring ”

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