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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 Morning

Dear Lord, please give me the patience to make it through this busy day with all the hustle, demands and distractions of modern life. Let me find the quiet time to hear your voice and feel your calming presence. I ask this in your son's name.

Prayer for Humility

Heavenly Father, who sent your Son to ride on an ass and to work as a simple carpenter: if you so humbled yourself to save me, how can I puff myself up with pride above others? Let me follow Christ's example, never to inflate myself with pride of status, of opinion, or of any of the gifts you have bestowed upon me.

Give me the grace to realize my ignorance, admit my mistakes, recognize my needs. Let me welcome good advice and sound rebuke, without defensiveness. Grant me always to praise rather than criticize, sympathize rather than discourage, build rather than destroy, and when I am angry at the ignorance of another, to recall my own ignorance and remember that we are all your beloved children. Let my hope and glory be ever in you, and not in my own vanity. This I ask in Christ's sake,

Meditation

[If you do not trust in God, you will forever be looking to others to prove your own merit to you, and you will never be satisfied.]

For Faith

Most High, Glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my mind. Give me a right faith, a firm hope and a perfect charity, so that I may always and in all things act according to Your Holy Will.

~ Francis of Assisi (1214)

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.

Do We Love God?

Exodus 16:9-21 (ESV)

Bread from Heaven [2]

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’” And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.

When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer [two quarts], according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’”

And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.

And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

Notes on the Scripture

od is teaching the Hebrews to trust him every day afresh. He is reforming their minds to think about their provisioning for their journey — their daily bread — in a way that is not natural to them (or anyone). And His method reflects a more fundamental change in their minds.

Today's ten-dollar word is "syncretism", which means adopting thoughts from different schools and melding them into a new one. The Hebrews' minds have been formed in a world where religion was polytheistic and syncretist. If a new god was adopted by a powerful minority in Egypt, Egyptian priests could simply slot the new god into their existing system, modifying their beliefs slightly in order to accommodate and include the new-god-worshipers into the mainstream.

But Yahweh has no truck with syncretism. The true God deals in one absolute, unyielding truth.

He is, however, sympathetic to human psychology. The Hebrews are not praying to Yahweh for sustenance; they are complaining. (Kvetching, as it were.) And yet, God hears them and answers them as if they had fallen on their faces in humility and faith.

Anyone with basic knowledge of the human mind realizes how hard fundamental change can be. People cling to what they learned as children, and the older we get, the harder it is to change. Thus He is gentle, gradual, patient.

The instructions that come from Moses and Aaron are not insights or decisions, not the product of experience and leadership; they are prophesy. God is training the Hebrews to hear prophesy and then witness it coming true. He is slowly reforming their fundamental view of the world.

It is an instructive lesson for every person, because in order to find God, it is something that each of us must undergo as an individual. Trust in God does not come naturally, for our minds learn first from our senses, and lead us to learn how to deal with the world. We do have superstitious instincts, but we cannot trust those, either; there are many things God has not promised, and the wild imaginings of the uninformed spirit fall easily into the hands of evil.

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“Praying from the Heart”

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