The Lord’s Prayer for the 21st Century

The Lord’s Prayer

interpreted by Dave Howell

Divine God, I honor your name.
May your will be with me;
may my world be as yours.
Help me provide for my needs.
Forgive me my shortcomings, just as I forgive the shortcomings of others.
Keep me from evil.
For all the nouns and verbs of the Universe
were spoken by You first, to your glory.
Amen.

First Draft

Staci Currant was the minister of the Celebration Congregation at First United Methodist Church here in Seattle when she showed me a copy of the Lord’s Prayer that somebody had re-cast in modern terms. I found that the old thoughts in new words really helped me see the prayer in a new light.

The more I studied it, though, the more I realized that the writers had made mistakes. “Thy will be done” became “Your will is done” and “Give us this day our daily bread” became “You supply our daily needs.”

But “Thy will be done” is not a statement, it’s a wish. “Give us . . . our bread” is a request, not a fact. So, I decided that the idea was strong, but the execution was weak, and re-wrote the Prayer myself. I believe it to be more true to the spirit of the original, and is offered up here to any and all who desire to read it, in the hopes that, whether you know or believe in the Lord’s Prayer, you find some value in this version.

The Lord’s Prayer

interpreted by Dave Howell

O God, who is divine, we praise your name.
May your will be with us;
may our world be as yours.
Provide us with sustenance,
and, as we forgive others, forgive us.
Help us avoid falling to temptation and evil,
for the world, the power, and the glory are yours eternally.
Amen.

While reading it aloud to myself, I realized that the use of the plural is rather distancing. I find singular pronouns more compelling, and more personal, thus:

The Lord’s Prayer

interpreted by Dave Howell

O God, who is divine, I praise your name.
May your will be with me;
may my world be as yours.
Provide me with sustenance,
and, as I forgive others, forgive me.
Help me avoid falling for temptation and evil,
for the world, the power, and the glory are yours eternally.
Amen.

Second Draft

It’s now some years later, and a spectacular credo by Teresa Nielsen Hayden has prompted me to tinker with the wording a bit.

The Lord’s Prayer

interpreted by Dave Howell

Divine God, I praise your name.
May your will be with me;
     may my world be as yours.
Help me find sustenance.
Forgive me, as I forgive others.
Help me avoid falling for the temptations of evil,
    for all the nouns and verbs of the Universe
    were spoken by You first, to your glory.
Amen.

You hopefully weren’t especially aware that this version does not assign a gender to God. I was very pleased the words allowed what English is generaly loathe to permit.

Draft The Third

Ten years later, on Easter no less, I find myself revisiting the prayer again. For one thing, I think “Hallowed be...” would be more accurately mapped to honoring, rather than praising.

The “trespasses” line (“forgive us...as we forgive those who trespass against us...”) is a curiosity. I had always read it as a rather ‘tit for tat’ kind of a thing; I ask God to forgive my errors and mistakes like I do to/for other people. The more I forgive, the more forgiven I am. But modern Protestant belief is crystal clear on the point that there is no screw-up so big that God can’t forgive it. There’s no way he’s going to forgive me only to the pathetic degree that I myself rise above petty behavior. Now, the original could be read as merely drawing a parallel: “Please forgive me, which is, you know, that thing that I also do from time to time.” This seems more in line with our, or at least my, understanding of the Christian God.

Sustenance. That’s a pretty pretentious synonym for “food.” But then again, “Give us this day our daily bread” isn’t really about having a full stomach, is it? It’s more of a metaphor for having what you need to survive. Looking back, the fact I added the word “find” is a bit disquieting, because the original form doesn’t say “please help me bake the daily bread,” but “please give me the goodies.” And yet, though it might be more congruent to the original, I cannot make myself return it to what would amount to “Feed me!” I have to retain my variant request for assistance, rather than a flat hand-out.

Then there’s the old “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I’m sorry? Do we really have to make a special request to God that he not nudge us to be naughty? I combined the two halves into a request to help me avoid falling for the temptations of evil. This time around, I’m asking myself just how tempting evil actually is. Y’know, not so much. “Evil” is rarely sought out. Rather, it’s usually a consequence—frequently of selfishness or some other negative emotion, but in some cases, it comes from a desire to do good, but with really poor implementation. No, I rarely find evil per se to be tempting. Sin, on the other hand, is a whole ‘nother matter, and that is what I should be soliciting help to avoid.

Yet on the other other hand, I’ve once again taken what was originally a request for action on the part of God to a plea for assistance for me to do the work.

The Lord’s Prayer

interpreted by Dave Howell

Divine God, I honor your name.
May your will be with me;
may my world be as yours.
Help me provide for my needs.^*
Forgive me my shortcomings, just as I forgive the shortcomings of others.
Keep me from evil.^†
For all the nouns and verbs of the Universe
were spoken by You first, to your glory.
Amen.

^*Or, “Provide for my needs.”

^†Or, “Help me avoid the temptations of sin.”

Sadly, as I work to refine it for clarity, it keeps shedding the poetry and grandeur that helps make the original “Our Father who art” version so compelling. Maybe ten years from now I’ll revisit it again and make it prettier. Fortunately, there’s those last couple of lines to keep it from being completely quotidian, and I’m entirely happy with what they mean, as well. “All the nouns and verbs were spoken by You first....” In other words, all that we are, and all that we do, everything that is or will be (the nouns) and everything that’s ever happened or will happen (the verbs) comes from God. Now, what we do with that gift is an entirely different matter, and is outside the scope of this prayer, but In The Beginning, it was God who set the table and loaded the universal iPod with dance tracks.