Tag Archives: meaningfulness

Aug 10 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Hallowed Be Thy Name

Open wooden door revealing a star-filled galaxy inside a stone room

“Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” – Matthew 6:9 RSV

In my own faith journey, being able to see God as a truly loving and personally present Father who is pleased with even my most feeble efforts to follow Him and live the life He has made me to live is a relatively recent development. Up until a few years ago, my prevailing image of God the Father was a bit more harsh. Like a detached Ward Cleaver, standing off in the distance shaking his head with a look of resigned disappointment on His face. Or less-than-jolly old Santa Claus making his list and checking it twice, with a “Naughty” column that seemed to be much fuller than the “Nice” one.

Indeed, the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer can be hijacked to paint a picture of the Father cutting a towering figure in a distant realm of Heaven, impersonal and imposing. Growing up Catholic with fairly strict parents, Jesus’ kicking off His blueprint for prayer with these words is a bit problematic on the surface. But while I’m sure the Lord wanted the disciples, and us, to always carry the proper reverence toward the Father, I believe that if we look closer, He’s not so much painting a picture of the Father, but more of the attitude we should always seek to bring when we approach His throne. An attitude of praise. Far from trying to make God seem more distant and unknowable in these opening words, He reminds us that God deeply desires our worship and praise, not from some need for self-gratification or an ego boost, but because He wants us to always be mindful of how good He is and how much He loves us.

Our praise to the Father is a sweet aroma, a New Testament version of the sweet aroma of burnt offerings that His people would offer up in Old Testament times. It says “God, you give us all good things, and so we offer back to you the best we have of that goodness, praising and acknowledging Your perfect love and care for us as Your children.” Jesus teaches us to revere the Father for who He is – merciful, loving, kind, and always working for our good. Keeping that picture of our Father opens our hearts and minds to His name being truly worthy to be hallowed (holy) above all other names. His throne room doors are swung wide open and we can approach with joy and boldness knowing we’ve come to the right place, to the One who truly can and will handle every concern we bring before Him.

God’s name is holy. But what exactly is God’s name? In our Western culture, just capital G “God” seems to be the default. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it does seem to rob us of an opportunity to expand our thinking about who our Father really is. In Moses’ life-changing encounter with God in Exodus 3, He tells Moses that his name is “I AM.” My lack of formal Biblical scholarship notwithstanding, I believe what He’s telling Moses with this name is that beyond and above all time and space and matter, He exists. He’s not just a being. He’s The Being. And that makes His name something that’s far beyond a word, or a label, or even something that can or should be casually spoken at all.

I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but my mom was. During her studies I recall her talking about the unpronounceable name of God – something scholars call the Tetragrammaton – written as YHWH in Hebrew. (Of course, when you don’t use vowels, isn’t everything unpronounceable?) From that we get Yahweh and Jehovah (a Latin derivative) as names for the Almighty. The Israelites had many names for God: Yahweh, Jehovah (names that the Hebrews dared not speak) Elohim, and Adonai to name a few. Adonai seems to be the more favored name and if you’re a fan of The Chosen, that’s how they refer to the Father in the show. Whatever name God might have on his hypothetical drivers license though, Jesus wants us to always be mindful that Our Father and His name are to be kept sacred and holy.

Personally, I think any name we give God which strengthens our image and deepens our relationship with Him as a loving Father is likely pleasing and acceptable to Him. I once had a dream where God seemed to manifest as a big happy smiling Hawaiian man, like a big teddy bear Don Ho type of dude. It was early on in my journey toward a more loving fatherly image of God, and it really resonated with me. I looked up the Hawaiian word for “father” and discovered the term Makua kane. So now when I pray privately, I often use that term to help center my thoughts on a more loving, smiling, teddy bear of a heavenly Father than that 50s sitcom dad waiting to hear what trouble I got into today. (Sorry Ward, just grab your pipe and have a seat. Dinner will be ready in an hour.)

One other challenge I see from the generic capital G God name we tend to use is it can open a door to some judgmental and potentially misguided thinking. I recently had a conversation with someone who had said that they’d started watching a movie but turned it off after 20 minutes or so because of all the times that various characters used the phrase “god damn.” I get the thinking since we’re commanded in Exodus 20:7 not to take the Lord’s name in vain. But similar to the angst in some circles over profanity, I’m not sure we have a great handle on where, or if, we’re the ones who should be worried about drawing that line. There’s probably a whole separate post to be had around what it really means to do that and I’m not going to get into that here. I’m just going to keep an open mind to how we choose to address our Heavenly Father and trust that if we bring the right attitude, it’s all good.

Bottom line, whatever you take from Jesus’ opening words, as you learn to pray more intimately with your Father, may it draw you closer to Him. For me, learning to pray more meaningfully in the way Jesus taught us starts like this:

Our Father – My big smiling, happy, kind Makua kane.

Who art in Heaven – Door wide open to Your throne, waiting to welcome me into Your loving arms to share time with me, Your beloved child.

Hallowed be thy name – May my speaking your beloved, endearing name be the sweetest of aromas to you, filling your presence with joy and praise.

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Aug 03 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

During the week, my morning quiet time is a treasured daily ritual. It’s in this time that I jump start my day with a good cup of coffee, and try to jump start my spiritual walk by reading a devotional, meditating, and praying. All the while enjoying the company of a 55-pound Goldendoodle on my lap. Along with my daily Bible reading, it’s my attempt to maintain some spiritual discipline in my life and to set my feet on the path to following the Lord wherever He may choose to take me in that particular day.

That’s not to say that it always flows smoothly and according to plan. Despite a good sleep score on my Apple Watch, meditation with heavy eyelids easily gives way to power napping. My favorite lap dog tends to believe that belly rubs should take priority over reading a devo on my phone, pinning my arm to the armrest of my chair until she deems puppy cuddle time to be over, or falls asleep. And prayer…that often presents the biggest challenge.

I think many of us struggle to pray. Much like youngsters eagerly writing to Santa as Christmas approaches, we come before God with laundry lists of intentions. Some are more personal either for ourselves or loved ones, while some are more focused on the world at large. Young Rob would leave nothing to chance, getting every wish down on his Christmas list. Adult Rob tends to bring that same approach to prayer, but let’s face it, that’s really tough because there’s always more that we can pray for. It’s a daunting undertaking and it can make it really hard to focus on what God truly intended prayer to be, which is intimate time alone with Him.

Even though the Lord’s Prayer is always there, ready and waiting when I’m struggling to find words to pray, I hesitate because somehow it seems like such a copout. If you’re like me, having grown up in church, you’ve probably had it memorized since kindergarten. And if you’re like my daughter forced in her teen years to begrudgingly pray before bedtime, you can probably buzz through it in about 10 seconds and barely even register any of the words. It’s no wonder that in a quest to feel more spiritual, rattling off that kind of quick, rote offering to God hardly seems like the bold approach to the Throne of Grace that we’re looking for.

But when Jesus’ disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray, what followed was a blueprint of how they, and by extension we can and should communicate with our heavenly Father. He took something that had been made complex by tradition and overly self-righteous religious leaders, and boiled it down to a simple, easily-remembered prayer that’s stood as a church staple for centuries. In a more loosely packaged and thought-provoking version of the Our Father than most of us learned, he gave us everything we need.

So, far from seeing it as a copout or a fallback option when our own words fail us, perhaps it’s time to dig deeper into the words Jesus gave us. Time to take a more mindful approach to the blueprint and see what we truly are asking of God in each line, as well as what He’s trying to tell us about how to live in true communion and intimacy with Him. That’s what we’ll try to do over the next several posts. I pray that together, we’ll learn some deeper truths about the Our Father, and about our Father, as we invite Jesus to teach us to pray all over again.

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Jul 28 2026
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The Christian Life

Let God Cook

I’ve always enjoyed the Food Network show Chopped. I’m no gourmet, but since the original Iron Chef first showed up on Food Network, cooking battle shows have tickled my fancy.  One of the most intriguing and challenging aspects of Chopped is the mystery basket.  Not only do the chefs have to battle the clock to create amazing dishes, they must do so using four random, mandatory ingredients revealed only moments before the clock starts.  Prawns.  Chocolate.  Pickled eggplant.  Lemon-herb cough drops.  From disjointed combos such as that they must produce a dish that meets the tough standard of the judges. Some are dazzling successes. Some don’t quite come together but get through by the skin of their teeth. Some end up under a sliver cloche…and…get chopped.

Each of us is something of a mystery basket of random ingredients.  We all have our gifts and talents, hopes and dreams. And most of us have at least some awareness of activities that energize us  As kids we explore and experiment, discovering what our basket holds – and what it doesn’t. As we gradually swap hoods – from child to adult, the ticking clock of the “real world” starts to pressure us into making something publicly presentable, economically productive, and spiritually meaningful (hopefully) of our basket. And like the chefs on Chopped determine what items they need from the pantry and the fridge in order to pull their dish together, we too must pull ingredients from the “pantry” – education, new skills, personal connections, confidence, etc. To be who we think we should be or become, stuff is missing.

Let’s be clear, the Chopped chefs need those other ingredients in some amount to make a cohesive and edible dish. But common mistakes they make are either using so much of those other items that they fail to spotlight the basket items, misusing a basket item due to lack of experience or familiarity with it, or even worse, forgetting to include basket item(s) altogether. Just like the chefs in the competition kitchen, we can go off track when we forsake focusing on the things in the basket that make us who we are. Either we try to pull in too much that is either aspirational or marginal in its impact to living the life God intended for us, or we forget some of our basket ingredients altogether, neglecting real, obvious gifts that we bring to to world: things that others often see more clearly in us than we can in ourselves. Or we may recognize that we’ve been gifted in some way, but lack confidence enough to ever put ourselves out there to use it to full potential. The life that results might be reasonable enough and even somewhat satisfying, but deep down we still feel like something’s missing, or it’s not what it should be.

The solution? Let God cook. The secret to unlocking the best flavor of us, no matter what’s in our basket, lies entirely in the hands of the chef. When we put the apron on and try to cook up the best version of ourselves, we’re always going to fall short. Why? Because to us our basket is a mystery that we keep having to unpack and discover as we go. Our loving Father, the original Master Chef (another great show) knew everything that goes into that basket, and exactly how to pull the very best dish together from it, because He put it there. The “basket” that makes up each one of us unique children of God is no mystery to Him. Unlike those Chopped chefs having to think on their feet and improvise a recipe on the fly to get something decent on the plate, God already had the best plan for each of our lives long before our clock ever started counting down.

Letting God cook isn’t easy. We want control. We often think we know what we want to do, what will make us happy, and what the world expects from us. And sometimes even if we’re clear on what our best ingredients are, putting them together in a way that’s livable and sustainable day-to-day is not a straightforward effort. Speaking from current experience, that can be especially tough to overcome. Having had my position eliminated a few months ago has enabled me to be more fully present for loved ones who’ve needed it in their current seasons of life. It’s also given me time to reflect on what’s in my basket and the life I was trying to cook up with it. And there was a LOT from the pantry in there. While it might have been palatable and even dazzlingly presented to outsiders, it was missing a lot of my basket ingredients and completely unsatisfying to me. I had to step back and realize that if I’m going to come out of this with a dish that satisfies my soul it’s going to require a very delicate and practiced chef, otherwise I’m going to find myself “chopped” from many of life’s more basic physical necessities. God has me in a place where I’m really going to have to let him cook if I’m going to stay in the game.

But Letting God cook is far from just sitting back unaffected and letting life happen to us, either. As each of us reflects on our own basket, we must listen to His voice and trust His guidance to find the best ways to combine our gifts and talents with what the world and our circumstances present us. To do that requires a deeper level of seeking and trusting Him then most of us are prepared for. Following God in this kitchen often involves uncertainty in the day-to-day that we’re definitely not used to, let alone comfortable with. But it’s here that we’re perhaps most open to be made into what God truly envisioned for us when He filled our basket. Total dependence on Him, mixed with mindful action and feeling the Spirit’s flow in moments of energizing efforts enables Him to work through us to create the most beautiful, satisfying, and winning dish that our lives can become.

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