Prayer is such a gift. Jesus teaches us to pray the Our Father using a sort of ancient formula. He starts with praising God the Almighty, praising his Holy Name, and he asks for God's will to be done. Next Jesus teaches us to ask for forgiveness of our sins, and the spiritual nourishment that we need to forgive others. Then we ask for protection from evil.
When God spoke to Abram after the blessing of the high priest Melchizedek (Genesis 14: 18-20) he assured Abram and told Abram that He was Abram's shield. He is our protection from evil. Through out scripture, from the Old Testament to the New, God is very insistant about praise. In the Our Father that Jesus gives us today, we are acknowledging how great God is and how small and insignificant we are. We want his will to be done and so recognizing his greatness allows us to be humbled so that we can open our hearts to him, and recognize too how silly it is to try to twist God into doing our will. God is so good that he sent his only son to die for us, that we may live and have a place in his family as his adopted sons and daughters. We are looking for reconciliation with the Father so that separated from him we may never be. That is love reciprocated.
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