How to Talk to a Father

Do you know what is hard to believe?

That God wants to hear from you. You. With your small voice and your sticky hands and the worry you have not told a single soul.

Sometimes you wonder. Is he too busy? Too big? Too far up in the sky to lean down and listen to someone as small as me?

In Jesus's day, some people prayed in a loud way. They stood where everyone could see them. They used long, fancy words, on and on and on, as if God could only hear you if you talked for a very long time. As if you had to talk him into it. As if you had to knock and knock and knock until at last he sighed and opened the door.

But on that same hillside where he had called his friends salt and light, Jesus said something that made the crowd fall silent.

He said: you do not have to shout. You do not have to dress up your words. Before you say a single thing, your Father already knows what you need.

Your Father.

Jesus could have called God the King who lives far away, or the Judge with the long list. Instead he picked the warmest word there is. Father. Like a dad who hears small feet running down the hall in the dark, and is already sitting up, already reaching out his arms, already glad it is you.

And then Jesus taught them how to talk to him, in words simple enough for a child to say:

Our Father in heaven, your name is holy.
Bring your kingdom. Make things down here the way they are up there, all good, all mended, all safe.
Give us the bread we need today.
Forgive us. And help us forgive.
Hold us close, and keep us from harm.

Bread for today. Long before, in the wilderness, God had fed his grumbling people just that way, manna every morning, enough for each day. He has been feeding his children for a long, long time.

And Jesus said our Father, not my Father. Because God is not gathering one child. He is gathering a whole family, from every street and every land, and he will not come home missing a single one of them. When you pray, you are never praying alone.

When you say bring your kingdom, you are asking for the best thing there is. A day when everything sad comes untrue. A day when no one cries. A day you can almost feel coming, the way you feel the morning before the sky goes light.

But how does a small child get to call the great God Father? How do you get to climb right up into his lap and tell him every single thing?

Through Jesus. Jesus opens the door. He takes your small hand and walks you in and says: this is my Father. And now he is yours too.

So the kingdom you are praying for has already begun. It started the day Jesus came, and it is rising like bread under a warm cloth, in you and in all his children.

Tonight, before you sleep, you can try it. Fold your hands, or don't. Whisper, or only think the words. Your Father is already leaning down, already listening, already glad it is you.