A Prayer for Monday, February 21, 2011

“He…Taught Them”

The words that follow this line constitute what we call the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most inspiring and challenging collection of teachings ever gathered in one place.

These amazing words, though, are only a portion of the words of Jesus collected in the Gospels and we can safely assume that the words of Jesus found in the Gospels are only a fraction of the teachings given by Jesus during his life on earth. We trust that our Bibles preserve for us the words of Jesus that we really need to hear, to know, and to do.

Cause us, O God, to take the words of Jesus with more seriousness than we do any other words, since those words come from the One of whom it is elsewhere said that he was the Word that was with God and that was God and that became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

Cause us, O God, to be able to hear the teachings of Jesus that still come to us through the presence of your Holy Spirit with us, teachings that are perhaps more liable to come to us in the sense of guidance in the ways we should feel, think, talk, and act than in any other form.

Cause us, O God, to be formed and shaped by the spoken and written words of Jesus and by the influence of the living Word who is Jesus into the best version of ourselves that we can be.

But before any of that, O God--cause us to listen to him…

Amen.

“Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying…” (Matthew 5:2).