DAILY BYTE
‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
At some point in life, we all (although many find it difficult to admit to) find ourselves helpless – in need of rescue and deliverance.
One of my earliest school memories is of just such a time. I had barely learnt to write my name, and used my skills in the misbegotten pursuit of carving my name on a brand, new school desk. Boy was I in trouble! I remember standing outside the principal’s office, trying desperately to think of a way to get out of my dilemma, to blame it on someone else, to be rescued somehow. However, at the end of the day, it was my name on my school desk. Clearly, I was not the smartest little kid on the block.
Well, this is where the Lord’s Prayer ends – just before the amen comes a recognition, a plea of helplessness against the forces of temptation and evil. The Norwegian theologian, Ole Hallesby, settled on the single word ‘helplessness’ as the best summary of heart attitude that God accepts as prayer writing: “Only they who are helpless can truly pray.”
Many people struggle intensely with this notion and so decry Christianity as being nothing but a crutch for the week. My reaction to that? Well, of course it is! For the reality is that we are all weak in some way. The worst thing we can do is to live in denial of that. But Christianity is also far more than a crutch because it challenges, forms and shapes us in some wonderfully life-stretching ways.
This line of the Lord’s Prayer guides us out into the wider salvation story. Its 3 themes – temptation, evil and deliverance – are all major, Biblical themes. The ending of the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that our struggles, those issues we get angry over and live in fear of, are in fact struggles of human spiritual history.
In this way, we are connected to the Bible’s salvation story and we find ourselves participating in it because we are encouraged to recognise the struggles of Biblical characters as our own, and in the same way to take up their hope in God as well.
This part of the Lord’s Prayer is preparing us for life after we say ‘Amen’ at the end of the prayer. Because after the amen, we need to move out into the world to action the Lord’s Prayer – to hallow God’s name, to seek God’s Kingdom and Will, to share our bread and to offer forgiveness, but we will do so amidst fierce weaknesses and temptations, and against fiery challenges of the world’s greatest evils.
We acknowledge, as we pray this line, that temptation and evil are areas where we often find ourselves helpless, and that we can only live out the content of the Lord’s Prayer if God does it within us. And God will do it within us which is exactly why we can move out in our spiritual journeys with great confidence and joy in God’s loving and saving power.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, help me to be humble enough to acknowledge my helplessness against certain temptations and evils, and help me to be bold enough to trust in you to rescue and deliver me. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 6. 13 NRSV
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
