Thought for the Week

by the Revd Patrick Bateman, Vicar at All Saints Ilkley

EARLY last year I received a letter from not one, but two Archbishops. What was so important that they would have gone to such trouble to write to me? Actually, what they said was so important that they did not just write to me, but to all the clergy under their care. As some readers will remember, it was a call to prayer using the familiar strap-line ”Thy Kingdom Come". Many of us have been brought up with these words, if not at Sunday school, in-school assemblies. We know the Lord's Prayer by heart. The words were given by Jesus in response to his disciples’ request “Lord, teach us to pray”. It has given Christians, down the ages, a framework to communicate well with God, each line can be meditated on and expanded. We can pray in many many effective ways but it seems to me that our prayers have a reliable potency when we use the Lord’s Prayer as framework (Luke’s gospel, chapter 11).

“Jesus says when (not if) you pray say…

Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us [… and so on].”

I have not received a letter from the Archbishops this year but gather that they still recommend prayer from various posts on social media. Their initiative has developed some healthy contagion and is set to become a global wave of prayer between Ascension Day and Pentecost (25th May - 4th June). I don’t know about you, but looking at the world and its needs I figure (if God exists and is listening - as I believe that he is) that there is plenty I could bother him about in prayer.

In a season of party manifestos and Brexit negotiations, I am left wondering what things would look like if the plea for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done could be seen in more tangible ways. I happen to believe that God can work his kingdom values into the hearts and minds of all human beings. We become people of influence by praying this prayer.