DEVOTION

Over the summer, I did some reading and study on the prayers of Jesus. That being said, when Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them a simple yet robust outline. Much has been written about this prayer, but I’d like to focus on the line, “On earth as it is in heaven.”

Eugene Peterson suggests many people think that what’s written in the Bible has mostly to do with getting into heaven—getting right with God, saving their eternal souls. It does have to do with that, of course, but not mostly. The Scriptures are equally concerned with living on this earth; living well, living in robust sanity.

In the Scriptures, heaven is not the primary concern, to which earth is a tag-along afterthought. “On earth as it is in heaven” is Jesus’ prayer. “Wisdom” is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. This on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven living is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves in.

This living well has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes towards others that make for peace.

Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. To that end, let’s take a page from Peterson’s Message translation in Romans 12:1-2: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for this day—today. And with its opportunities to eat, sleep, go to work, and walk around our daily lives, we place it before you as an offering. May we see the sacred in the everyday and today live on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

Don Peslis

Pastor of Chapel Worship

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