I spent the whole day today at the church, working on computers. Oddly enough, I think I get more theological reflection done at home than at the church! This being the case, I thought I'd share an insight I had a couple of weeks ago.

Hope (my church) is in the process of buying a monastery as our new church building. A few of us 'droids from the office went by there a couple of weeks ago to pray in the chapel (which is open to the public.) As is my custom, I prayed through the Lord's prayer. In the past, when I've prayed inwardly I have tended to change the Lord's prayer from "We" to "I" - so, it becomes "My father in heaven, holy be your name ... give ME today MY daily bread," etc.

However, this time I was struck with the insight that the "we" is probably deliberate. We do not pray in isolation - we pray as a community of believers, part of God's chosen people, citizens of God's kingdom, inseparable, with truth and just... err .... Yes. Anyway, all flowery language aside, my core realization was that the Lord's prayer is not a prayer for "me", it's a prayer for "us". Even when I pray inwardly, alone, I pray as someone who has been given the standing to pray only by my membership in the community of the church. And that's pretty stinkin' cool.

But it gets better. When got to the part about "lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one" I was given another insight. This insight began with the question "what is the temptation before us, as a body, right now." as I prayerfully considered this, I realized that our greatest temptation was to run away from the calling of God, to be God's people.

This is important: being in a church with other members of the Romans 3.23 crowd is not always easy. Often, it seems that the easiest thing to do is to flee from the challenges of community life - to jump to another church, or (maybe worse) press into our own private cloister, where religion is defined exclusively by our private experience apart from the church. I have felt that temptation, and if you've been around church much so have you. Don't give into the Dark Side. Y'all hear?