Several years ago, prayer in schools was being hotly debated around the country. During that time a cartoon appeared in a publication where a teacher comes upon a group of students who were all kneeling in a circle shooting dice. She quickly sized up the situation and said, “Oh, thank goodness! You’re playing dice. For a minute I thought you were praying!”

            Prayer still gets a bad rap these days. Politics enters the discussion, and we all know how politics and religion don’t mix. People who pray are sometimes looked on with disdain or with pity. Some people think of prayer as an exercise in futility, and that those who pray are just wasting their time and effort. Others think prayer is just so much “mumbo jumbo” and that anyone who prays is putting their faith in nothing at all.

            But that is certainly not what Jesus thought! All four gospels mention Jesus praying, and Luke is a good example. After Jesus’ baptism, he was praying when the Holy Spirit descended on him.^⁠1 Several times, Luke points out that Jesus has just spent time privately in prayer.^⁠2 In Luke, chapter 10, Jesus, rejoicing in the Spirit, addressed God repeatedly as “Father,” which he now instructs his followers to do in this most famous prayer.^⁠3

When you pray

            Jesus spoke this prayer in response to a request from one of his disciples. We don’t know who asked, when he asked, or where he asked. All we know is that he asked, “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.” We might like to know the details. Who asked? What prompted that disciple to ask on that day? Where exactly were they? When did this all take place? How is it that Luke, with great narrative skills, did not include any of these facts in his account?

            Perhaps the absence of answers to all these questions is explained by how often Jesus prayed. The

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