Our dog, Zach, makes me laugh every day. We have him in agility training. We don’t have competitive hopes, but it seemed like it would be good exercise, socialization, and a good challenge. But when several owners show up with their dogs and a course of obstacles, bedlam is sure to follow. The tunnel through which the dogs go is guaranteed to bring laughs. One dog wouldn’t go through the tunnel without having the leash in his mouth. So cute. Other dogs enter the tunnel, the owner shouts “Go, go, go,” and runs to the other end of the tunnel only to see the dog running back out from the entrance. And then there are the owners. Sometimes they end up having to make the jumps with their dog because the dog is moving so fast. Sometimes, the owners knock down the supports for the jumps. I once had to crawl into the tunnel and pull Zach through. Clearly, I needed some agility training too.
When the dogs succeed or make good efforts, everyone cheers. The dogs are proud. The owners beam. It is a special moment for all of us.
But most of life is not lived on a dog playground.
Life is filled with stressors. The list is long: worry about school, about jobs, about children or a marriage, about health, about money, about relationships, politics, the future, the world. The list doesn’t end. Worry can be paralyzing.
Jesus included in the Lord’s Prayer an invitation to talk to God about the things going on in our life. It is the fourth petition in the Lord’s prayer, right between the petitions for alignment and the assignments. With this petition Jesus reminded us that our lives matter to God. There is nothing we cannot pray about. God cares about our whole life.
At the same time, the prayer as a whole gives us some interesting advice.
The subject of the first petition is perspective. It invites us to think about the perspective we bring to an issue and to examine our own perspective. Is it the best way to look at this or is there a better way? The second petition is about hope and reminds us that we have a reason for hope even when things are hard. And the third petition is about trust…trusting God’s love for us. These three petitions provide a frame for the prayers we make for our life. And the fourth petition, the one that invites us to share and reflect on our life, has its own suggestions. As it invites us to pray for “daily bread,” it reminds us to focus on the day and not let worry about everything overwhelm us. It also reminds us with its language that the Israelites received bread from heaven each day in the wilderness. God provided for them. The prayer wasn’t in vain, though it led to a surprising result and required their daily trust.
Years ago, we had a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Lucy. She was made for retrieving. She took the neighbors’ newspapers in the morning and brought them to our door. When I started returning them, Lucy started burying them around our yard. Among other things, she made me think about what we were made for. It isn’t retrieving morning papers. We were made to glorify God and enjoy God forever. Living into that changes how we look at the jumps and tunnels.
