Lent Reflection #23: Keeping Prayer Simple

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Matthew 6:

9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
[a]For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

I know, I know. Not a rote prayer, a model; repeating it frequently goes against what Jesus was teaching in the context. Please. Just read the prayer.  

Lord, deliver us from evil and the evil one, whatever forms those may take. That includes this disease we are daily confronted with, or at least news and warnings and laws and restrictions about it. But also deliver us from the evil of fear that is being spread, the evil of our own tendency to  hunker down and not think of our neighbor, the evil of letting the habits of this time continue after the disease is abated, the evil of hoarding and not trusting you as this prayer says for our daily bread, the evil of forgetting You in this time of challenge and in the times when we are not challenged.

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