Reflection for January 29

When Jesus says, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” I listen. Even during my doubting days in college I listened, and carefully, because Jesus knew not only more about God than I did—that was obvious; he also knew more about the world. He could talk convincingly to me about a father in heaven because he took seriously the earth’s homeless orphans. He could talk to me convincingly about living at peace in the hands of love because he knew that the world lived constantly at war in the grip of hatred. He could talk to me of light, and joy, and exultation, because I knew that he himself knew darkness, sorrow, and death. That’s why, eventually, Jesus became for me too my Lord and Savior, and that’s why I think it right to say that the authority of the Lord’s Prayer stems from the reliability of the source (William Sloane Coffin).