The Wonder of Scripture with Mark Ellison
Feeling Overwhelmed and Turning to Prayer
Wow, thank you so much, Jason. What a kind introduction. Good morning to all of you. I am really honored to be here with you. Thank you for coming to learn more about scripture—and maybe for some of you to earn a little bit of last-minute extra credit before the semester ends. It is a busy time, and I know you all have many things you could be doing. I am excited to share some thoughts with you today about the Lord’s Prayer.
As we wrap up this busy semester, maybe you, like me, can relate all too well to this meme:
I feel this. I don’t know how your semester has been, but for me, this has been the roughest, most difficult semester of my life. I’ll spare you the details. I’ll tell you my students have been wonderful and my colleagues have been wonderful, but I’ve been carrying heavy burdens, and sometimes it’s taken all my strength and prayers just to summon the strength to keep showing up.
I’ve had moments where I felt a little like the prophet Isaiah when he felt overwhelmed by his own inadequacy before God. He said, “Woe is me! For I am undone,” or “Woe to me. I am ruined. It’s all over. I am doomed. There is no hope for me. I am doomed.” Ironically, that’s from the Good News Translation.
A few years ago, my daughters gave me a Gen Z translation of selections from the Bible, which is just fabulous. It doesn’t have Isaiah 6:5, but elsewhere I was able to find these proposed Gen Z translations:
- “Bruh, I’m actually cooked.”
- “I’m literally crashing out.”
- “I am not okay. I’m in my delusional era.”
And there was one search result that was too irreverent to share in this setting.
Speaking of Bible translations, I am thrilled, as probably many of you are, about the Church’s recent announcement of an endorsement of using modern editions in our Church classes and meetings. I feel like with that policy change, and the unprecedented amount of biblical scholarship that’s accessible in the world, and the talent and expertise among members of the Church—and right here at BYU—that we Latter-day Saints are poised to make some exciting strides forward in our scriptural and historical literacy.
Desperate Prayer and Showing Up Before God
But back to what I was saying about being overwhelmed, crashing out, being delusional, and actually cooked. In preparing for today, I felt quite inadequate, and I’ve been desperately praying the prayer that I’ve been praying for much of my life: “Lord, help me. I need a miracle. Take these five loaves and two fishes—my meager offering, ridiculously insufficient to feed a multitude—and in your hands, bless them, multiply them, make them enough for the task.”
I’m comforted by something that Christian writer Anne Lamott wrote about prayer: “Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true. We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape.”
A Prayer for Uncertainty (Thomas Merton)
I love the prayer by Trappist monk Thomas Merton, sometimes billed as a prayer anyone can pray. And I’ve felt the way he describes many times. Maybe you've had times where you felt like this too.
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Learning How to Pray When Words Fail
I share all this at the risk of oversharing, because some of you may be feeling a little bit lost or overwhelmed as you finish this semester. Maybe you too are weary or heavy laden with the burdens you're carrying. Maybe you need a miracle. I will pray for you too.
It's never been easy to be a university student. It's especially difficult when the world is filled with troubles and when your world is filled with troubles. For these next few minutes, I pray that God's loving, life-giving Spirit will rest upon us, calm our hearts, enlighten our minds, and renew our hope together.
I spoke of desperate prayer in my own times of need. My prayers have often looked something like this:
Can you relate? Sometimes my emotions are so strong and my burden so heavy that I can hardly find words to express it. But the testimony of Scripture and of believers throughout time is this:
The apostle Paul wrote, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but that very Spirit joins us and with us pleads to God with groanings that words cannot express.”
I'm grateful for that, because I have often struggled in my own prayer life—not only in times of distress, but even in the less trying, more ordinary times of life. Sometimes I felt like my personal prayers have not been effective. I've repeated the same petitions day after day without really feeling changed or renewed by the experience.
But over the last 15 years or so, one of the most transformative spiritual changes in my life has come from studying the Lord's Prayer as recorded in Matthew 6:9–13.
The Lord’s Prayer Around the World
Let me take you to Jerusalem, to the Mount of Olives, to the Pater Noster Church.
"Pater Noster" means "Our Father" in Latin. This church, built on the fourth-century site of one of the earliest churches in the Holy Land, is decorated with tile plaques of the Lord's Prayer—the "Our Father"—in languages from around the world, a reminder that followers of Jesus in every nation have been praying this prayer for centuries.
One time when I was visiting this site, I heard beautiful singing coming from inside the chapel. And as I looked inside, I saw a young woman kneeling and singing all by herself. I waited quietly outside, and a few minutes later, when she was done and stepped outside, I thanked her for her beautiful singing.
She told me she'd been praying. She sings her prayers.
Anciently, songs and prayers weren't the two separate categories that they are for us. The Psalms were both hymns and prayers. And our own Doctrine and Covenants 25 tells us that the song of the righteous is a prayer unto God.
This young woman told me she likes to pray the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples. She asked if I would like to hear it. I said yes, please, and I asked if it would be OK if I recorded it. She said yes.
So for the next two minutes and 15 seconds, let's read and ponder silently to ourselves the words of the Lord's Prayer as we listen to our sister in Christ, this Middle Eastern Christian woman, sing this prayer she loves so much.
[Video of young woman singing in chapel]
9 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in 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 lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
MATTHEW 6:9-13 KJV
Isn't that beautiful?
Hearing the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic
During my first two years of high school, I was fortunate to attend a wonderful Catholic school where we'd begin each day reciting the Lord's Prayer. Some of you might come from a religious background where that was your custom too. For me, it was a new experience because I'd been raised Latter-day Saint, and public reciting of the Lord's Prayer is not a part of our sacrament meetings.
As a high school freshman and sophomore, I didn't fully appreciate how meaningful the prayer was, although it did feel good to join in prayer with my classmates each day. But during graduate school, as I studied the New Testament and early Christianity, I came to learn more about this amazing text and what Jesus's earliest followers thought of it.
We can see portraits of these ancient Christians in the catacombs of Rome, where the earliest Christian art is found. One of the most preferred ways that early Christians chose to portray themselves and their loved ones was in the ancient posture of prayer: standing with arms raised and hands open, lifting up holy hands as described in 1 Timothy 2:8 and numerous other places.
This portrait style was a way that Christians could represent themselves as people of religious devotion. And this posture invites us to think of prayer as approaching God with empty, outstretched hands, in reflection of a yearning heart and mind.
These early Christians were taught the Lord's Prayer by their bishops before their baptism, and they recited it in public worship and in private in their homes each day. As I've studied this subject, the Lord's Prayer has reached down through 2,000 years and lifted my own sights about what prayer can be, and how my own daily prayers can reconnect me with Jesus and his mission, and how they can renew and reorient me each day.
How Each Line Connects to Jesus’s Life
Ancient Christians noticed that each line of the prayer evokes moments from Jesus's own life, teachings, and ministry. For example, beginning the prayer with “Our Father who art in heaven” called to mind how Jesus had prayed to God by addressing him as Abba, the Aramaic word for father. Paul's Greek-speaking converts evidently prayed using this Aramaic title too, in emulation of Jesus's own prayers.
Ancient Israel did understand God to be a father, but it was not customary to begin prayers by addressing God as father. Ancient Christians noticed that Jesus was the first person in the Bible to do this. He was inviting his followers into a fuller embrace of Israel's own tradition and into his own experience of God as a loving, close, caring father.
When ancient Christians prayed, “Thy kingdom come,” they recalled how the essence of Jesus's teaching revolved around the idea of the kingdom of God. As the Gospel of Mark tells it, “Jesus came into Galilee preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. And saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’” (Mark 1:14–15)
For Jesus, the kingdom of God was the reign of God, the time when God's righteous and gracious rule would prevail on this earth as foreseen by Israel's prophets. What does it look like when God reigns in a person's life? Jesus's life answers that question. What does it look like when God reigns in a society? Jesus's followers were to make that a reality on earth as it is in heaven by the way they lived. So for those earliest Jesus followers, praying “Thy kingdom come” was a way of signing on to Jesus's message, in effect, asking God to reign within their own heart and actions and in the lives of all people.
Praying “Thy will be done” called to mind how Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane as he faced his most difficult and painful final hours: “Not my will, but thine be done.” To pray with these words was to remember Jesus's devotion to God and to resolve to emulate it in one's own life.
Praying “Give us this day our daily bread” reminded ancient Christians that Jesus was the bread of life, that he'd miraculously fed multitudes with literal bread and had assured his disciples that God would care for them, like God feeds the birds of the air, like God had rained manna from heaven for ancient Israel.
Praying “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” called to mind Jesus's parable of the unforgiving servant and his teachings that if we do not forgive others, neither will we be forgiven. It was to see oneself as living in a realm defined by forgiveness.
And so on with each line of the prayer. Ancient Christian commentaries and homilies on the Lord's Prayer repeatedly draw on these connections between prayer and moments from Christ's own life so that reciting the prayer became a practice of remembering Jesus, connecting with Jesus, and reaffirming a personal commitment to follow him.
The Lord’s Prayer as a Summary of the Gospel
In the earliest commentary on the Lord's Prayer, Tertullian, writing around the year 198, said that the prayer embraces almost every discourse of the Lord, every record of his discipline, so that, in fact, in the prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole gospel.
Isn't that an amazing thought, that a single prayer of five verses is maybe a kind of summary of the entire four Gospels?
In summaries of so few words, how many utterances of the prophets, the gospels, the apostles, how many discourses, examples, parables of the Lord are touched on. In a time when our prophet is urging us to center our faith on Jesus Christ, the idea that prayer can be a means of doing that personally, privately, daily, is a powerful thought.
The Lord’s Prayer in Latter-day Saint Practice
Did you know that President Russell Nelson recited the Lord's Prayer in general conference? It was in his April 2009 conference talk, “Lessons from the Lord's Prayers.” He recited the entire prayer from Matthew 6 and urged church members to think about what each line could teach them. And he shared a few of his own thoughts about each line.
He pointed out that the prayer appears four times in Latter-day Saint scripture. It's in Matthew 6, Luke 11, 3 Nephi 13, and the Joseph Smith Translation.
Pattern or Repetition?
Have we sometimes had a bit of a dismissive attitude to the Lord's Prayer? I've noticed that we tend to emphasize that the Lord's Prayer is a pattern rather than a formula to be memorized and recited. And we cite Jesus's teaching against vain repetitions in prayer, and we point out that Jesus introduced the Lord's Prayer with the instruction, pray after this manner. But we have rote prayers in our worship, such as the sacrament prayers found in section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and those also are introduced with the instruction to pray after this manner.
We have communal prayers in the temple that are repeated as a group. Temple dedication prayers are written and recited. Scripture is full of written prayers in the Psalms, in the Gospels, in the Book of Mormon. There's nothing inherently improper about a prayer that is written, memorized, recited individually or as a worshiping community.
Ancient Israel recited the Shema daily, the prayer beginning in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The things Jesus cautioned against were thoughtlessness in prayer, empty phrases, many words, performative public displays of prayer, and the assumption that prayers must be lengthy. But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that the Lord's Prayer is meant to be a pattern for our own prayers that we then pray in our own words. Let's ask ourselves, how consciously do we really use it as a pattern?
I realized that in my own prayers, I was thoughtlessly following the simple four-step pattern that I'd been taught in primary and that I taught people on my mission, but I hadn't really grown beyond that very elementary framework.
When I really turned my attention to each line of the Lord's Prayer, it was life-changing for me. So let's do some closer looking at this wondrous text for the next few minutes. And as we do so, you might think of how you would choose to incorporate these ideas in your own prayer life.
The Structure of the Lord’s Prayer
The Lord's Prayer appears in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, the inaugural sermon of Jesus's ministry as told in the Gospel of Matthew. This sermon is Jesus's introduction to the kingdom. And the prayer at its core represents a way Jesus's followers can bring about the kingdom in their own little sphere of activity on earth as it is in heaven. We can chart out the Sermon on the Mount like this and see at a glance how the prayer appears at its center. Or as some commentators have done, we can map out an inverted parallel structure to the Sermon and see that in that structure too, the prayer appears at its very center.
Whether that chiasm was intended or contrived, it does seem that the prayer at the center of the sermon represents a hinge point upon which discipleship turns.
Two Movements: God’s World and Our World
Many observers have noticed that the prayer has a two-part structure. The first part, verses 9 and 10, turns our focus to God, orienting and retuning our minds and hearts. If you're a guitar player, you know that usually the first thing you need to do when you pick up the guitar is you've got to retune it. It gets slightly out of tune with time, with changes in room temperature, any time it's accidentally bumped or knocked over. We need daily tuning too. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”
The second part of the prayer, verses 11 through 13, turns our focus to our own lives, applying Christ's teachings in our lives today. As one Christian minister put it, “The first part gets me in on God's world; the second part gets God in on my world.” (Yinka Dawson, Lectio 365 Midday Prayer, 7 Aug 2025)
“Our Father”: Prayer as a Communal Act
The prayer has plural pronouns: “Our Father, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive,” and so on. Early Christians and modern readers have recognized that even in an individual's private prayer, saying, “Our Father,” with the plural pronoun urges the believer from the very start of prayer to approach God mindful of others.
To see oneself in prayer as one of countless individuals, each needing heaven's help, to see oneself as one member of God's larger family. The plurals help believers consider their own needs alongside the needs of others. Thus, the prayer invites connection with God and neighbor. Yet another way it drew believers into following Jesus, who taught that love of God and neighbor formed the heart of true religious life.
The Flow of the Prayer
There seems to be a kind of progression, too, from one line to another. As each thought leads logically to the next, we start by addressing God, and we call to our minds the kind of caring, loving being that God is. We summon our hearts and minds and lives to revere and cherish God. We pray for God's reign, God's righteous goodwill to prevail in the world and in our lives.
But we no sooner ask for this than we sense that we will really need help to truly live “thy will be done” in our lives. And so we immediately pray for that help, that daily bread, that strength that we will need for today's portion of “thy will be done.” And we ask forgiveness for times we have failed to live God's will. But we no sooner ask for that help and forgiveness than we're reminded that Jesus taught we must forgive to be forgiven. So we confess forgiveness of others in our prayer.
After praying for this forgiveness of past sins, we pray for help avoiding future sins and bearing future trials: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And we can only make such a request because God is powerful and able to give us that help. So we express the faith, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.”
Applying the Lord’s Prayer
If there were time, we could go line by line through the prayer and reflect upon each one like commentaries have done since the days of ancient Christianity. But in the interest of time, I'll share just a few personal reflections on a couple parts of the Lord's Prayer that have become meaningful to me in a way that I hope will suggest the potential for all of us to find personal meaning in it.
Daily Bread and Day-at-a-Time Discipleship
First, “Give us this day our daily bread” and a day-at-a-time discipleship. I used to run marathons and even ran some ultra marathons. Here's a photo of me running the Moab Alpine to Slickrock 50-mile run back when I was awesome. My last ultra marathon was the Kachina Mosa 100K, which is run in the mountains behind Y Mountain. It's tough. Not only is it 62.2 miles long, it has four major climbs totaling 17,400 feet of vertical ascent and descent. And since that's not enough, it's run on the first Saturday in August, the hottest time of the year in Utah.
I had trained well, and I was really excited to try to beat the time that I had run the year before. So the race started at 3:30 in the morning. I felt good through the early miles. But as I neared 25 miles and the sun was up and getting hot, things started to go wrong.
My stomach became upset, my legs ached, and my energy just tanked. In the blazing heat, I slowly grinded up the agonizing climb to mile 30, and then I tried and failed to recover during the more runnable next 10 miles. By the time I dragged my sorry carcass into the 40-mile aid station, I was undone. I was “actually cooked,” “literally crashing out.” I was “not okay.” I was “in my delusional era.”
A friend met me there. He was planning to be my pacer for the last 22 miles, and I told him, I can't go on. I'm gonna have to drop out. There's no way I can do 22 more miles.
He said, “Don't worry, we're not gonna do 22 more miles right now. We're just gonna take one step. Can you do that? Good. Now we're just gonna walk down this dirt road here towards the next aid station.”
And he walked with me.The next 12 miles, he walked with me. I couldn't run. I couldn't even jog the downhills. My legs hurt so bad.
But finally, when we got to the 52-mile aid station, apparently my stomach decided to process a whole day's accumulation of undigested energy gels all at once. Caffeine and maltodextrin coursed through my veins, and I had a rebirth, an astonishing renewal that ultra marathoners often experience. My legs felt great and I was wired. I practically sprinted the last 10 miles, finishing about half an hour faster than the year before, even with all that walking.
And then I immediately retired from running ultra marathons.
When we are exhausted, stressed, feeling awful, it's so discouraging to face the prospect of continuing on with no end in sight. How will I ever keep this up? It's so easy for the entire imagined future difficulty to crowd itself into the present moment and launch us into panic. I don't know how I can resist this temptation, bear this trial, keep this difficult commandment, do this challenging task, for the rest of my life.
At such a moment, Jesus stands there like my friend at the aid station. You don't have to do that for the rest of your life today. You only need to bear today's portion today. You only need to take the step before you right now. And so, Jesus invites his followers into the divine present, into a day-at-a-time discipleship with the invitation to pray each day, Give us this day our daily bread. One step enough for me.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson once told the story of when his mother was going through cancer treatments and she was so sick and weak and discouraged and she said one day to her mother, “I can't stand going to 16 more of these treatments.”
And her mother said, “Can you go today?”
“Yes.”
“Well, honey, that's all you have to do today.”
Elder Christofferson said, “It's helped me many times when I remember to take one day or one thing at a time.”
By praying daily for our daily needs, our daily bread. We reenact the journey of ancient Israel through the wilderness, living by the daily provision of manna from heaven, which the Israelites had to trust would appear each day and which they had to gather up each day.
Living One Day at a Time
A few verses after “Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus tells his listeners, “Take no thought for the morrow.” Or more accurately, “Do not worry. Don't stress out about tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.”
In the very last verse in Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “I am with you alway.” Remember that King James rendering using that archaic English word? And spellcheck always wants to correct it to always, but it's alway. The Greek is literally “all the days.” Christ is with us always, not just in a general sense, but each day as we live it. In these stressful last days of this semester, or in these stressful last days, we can find peace in a day-at-a-time discipleship.
“Hallowed Be Thy Name” and the Character of God
Finally, a few thoughts on “Hallowed be thy name” and the character of God. When I was young and I encountered descriptions of a harsh God who was strict and angry, it engendered fear in me. And fear can immobilize us. In the parable of the talents, the third servant who buried his talent out of fear said that he did so because he knew his master was a harsh man. The master replies, as modern translations render it, “You knew I was a harsh man, did you?”
It reminds me of Miracle Max and The Princess Bride. “Look who knows so much! It turns out he's only mostly dead.”
“You thought I was harsh, did you? Look who knows so much.” Maybe the third servant's main problem was that he didn't understand his master's character. He mistakenly thought his master was harsh, and that paralyzed him into inaction.
The Lord's Prayer begins with an invitation to reflect on God's name. And name is character. Name is reputation. And the prayer invites us to cherish God's name, to make it hallowed, to make it holy in our hearts.
What God’s Name Reveals About Him
When Moses first learns God's name, YHWH, anglicized Jehovah, it is moments after God tells Moses something wondrously revelatory about his character:
“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”
What kind of being is God? Notice those four verbs. God sees his people, hears their cries, knows, understands their sufferings, and comes down to deliver.
Right after this, he reveals his name to Moses, Y-H-W-H. I am the ever-reliable, ever-present, seeing, hearing, understanding, delivering God.
“Hallowed be thy name.” Not a harsh king, not a cruel taskmaster, but Abba—Father.
Becoming a Reflection of God’s Love
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, “The more I come to know my heavenly Father, the more I see . . . He is not angry, vengeful, or retaliatory . . . Our Father in Heaven's love for us . . . surpasses by far our ability to comprehend.”
When we come to a realization of that divine love and that enters our hearts and minds and we live in that love, we become a vehicle of that love for others.
Conclusion: One Changed Person at a Time
The kingdom comes not by power, not by violence or compulsion, but in this way: one changed person at a time. Each individual who has been touched by God's love, who begins the day praying, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” whether in those exact words or with that intent, and then goes forward into his or her day trying to live God's will on earth as it is done in heaven, becomes a living, walking embodiment of the kingdom.
And every person who crosses their path will then encounter the kingdom in some way through a small act of kindness, through a generous gesture, through an unselfish deed. And the kingdom, that wondrous realm of God's love, will expand that much more throughout the world—one changed person at a time.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Audience Questions
So it looks like we have about seven minutes or so for any questions. If any of you would like to ask any.
And if you need to go, it's totally cool if you have to get up and go, yes.
Question: Just can you comment on that painting there on the right? That's really quite something.
Answer: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a painting of Moses. And it appears in a third-century synagogue in Syria, Dura Europos. And it represents sort of the beginning of figural art in Jewish art.
Prior to this time, we don't see a lot of depictions of human beings in Jewish art. And so this is really interesting. It depicts Moses as a Roman man of the third century. And so he's wearing the Roman tunic and cloak, the himation. And you can see the two blue clavi stripes that is part of the attire of a respected Roman man of the time.
Of course, Moses historically wouldn't have dressed like a Roman, but this is how he was pictured. One thing that does kind of help us imagine is what did Jewish men look like in antiquity? And you see a dark brown kind of complexion, short, dark curly hair, and a short dark beard. And this is a part of the discussion of what might Jesus have looked like historically. And my friend Matthew Gray wrote that first chapter in the book Picture Christ and discusses some of these paintings from the Dura Europos synagogue.
Yes, back here.
Question: You mentioned talking about the Lord's Prayer and using it in our daily repetition. In your opinion, should we be saying the Lord's Prayer daily, or how would that be used?
Answer: I recommend thinking about the Lord's Prayer and being mindful of it and thinking about using it as a pattern. But I don't recommend, I don't intend to imply or prescribe exactly how anyone should pray. Please follow the Spirit and what the Spirit tells you to do. But for me, reflecting on each line has caused me to think, “OK, how would I pray this?” And I've interacted with the Lord's Prayer in a variety of ways. But I would say, follow what the Spirit tells you to do with it. Does that clear it up? I'm sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier comments.
Yes, hi, Eric.
Question: Hi. I love the help. Thanks. Wow, Anne Lamott formulation. Then you get Ralph [], a countercultural icon that says, well, “there's actually one more kind of prayer, which is, ‘how do you need my help today?’”
Answer: Do we see elements of, “Lord, how do you need my help today?” in the Lord's Prayer?
For me, I sense that most clearly in the line, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” because when we pray that or an idea like that, we're asking for God's reign to come to this earth, and that means I am asking that I live in such a way that God's reign is manifest, that his justice and his goodness and generosity is evident in all my actions. And so a natural outgrowth of that I think might be that idea of, “Lord, how can I advance the kingdom that Jesus taught today?” But that's a great question. Rosalynde, did you have that?
Question: So forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Reflect on that ask, what exactly is the relationship between God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others?
Is it analogy? Is it dependence?
Answer: Yeah, there's so many ways we can think about that. To me, I think of this as an ongoing practice. When, in my own prayers, when I realize that I'm having trouble in my heart forgiving someone, then I find myself saying, “Okay, Lord, help me with that part of it.” My favorite thought on it comes from N.T. Wright, and I'll just paraphrase, but he says, it's not that God is petty and up there saying, well, I won't forgive you because you didn't forgive, but it's more like there's a gate in our hearts and it's the gate to mercy. And if we want it to be open so that we can receive God's mercy, it has to be open for our mercy to flow out to others. And if we shut it to others, we're also shutting it to God. It's not that God doesn't want to forgive us, it's that we have closed it off. To me, that makes sense.
I thought I saw, Kristian, yeah.
Question: Can you talk a little bit more about prayer gestures in the way of Christianity and how that has influenced your own prayer life?
Answer: Prayer gestures and how that's influenced my prayer life. In the New Testament, there is a variety of postures of prayers that are mentioned. So Jesus says in Mark chapter 10 to his disciples, when you stand praying, so he assumes this traditional ancient posture of standing, maybe with uplifted arms. But there's also when Jesus prays in Gethsemane, he falls to his face, just totally face down on the ground. And that is the most humble posture of prayer. And there's also Daniel in the Bible praying kneeling, if I'm remembering correctly. And so multiple postures of prayer.
And how this has affected me is it has kind of opened me up a little bit and helped me break out of too rigid a formalism in my personal prayers. I used to feel like I had to pray in a certain way, in a certain posture, and if I didn't feel like that, then I'd feel like, well, then I can't pray. And realizing that there's multiple postures, and also what Amulek said in Alma 34 about even when you don't pray vocally, let your heart be full, drawn out continually to God, that prayer can just be a part of the course of life.
And Basil of Caesarea said if you do that, if you just constantly have your heart oriented in a prayerful kind of posture, then your whole life becomes one ceaseless, uninterrupted prayer. And so in my formal prayers, often I'll kneel down and pray vocally. Sometimes I'll stand, and I won't beat myself up about not kneeling. And often when I'm just out on a walk, I'll just be talking to God: Lord, thank you for this sunset, thank you for this sky, thank you for these birds, you know, and just in that constant ceaseless uninterrupted prayer that Basil described.
All right. I think that's all our time. And so thank you so much for coming. And if any of you want to come up and talk, I'm glad to visit.
