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Lords Prayer 
I believe I have written before about the Lord's Prayer but it is so much a central part of Jesus's teaching that I am prepared to risk repetition.
It is possible to approach the topic by way of the word 'Abba'. Scholars identify various words, which we use for referring to 'father'; not being a scholar makes me rely on those who are. It is said that Jesus was unique in applying to God the word 'Abba'. This, they say, is distinguished from the word 'Abinu' (our Father) used in some synagogue prayers and from 'Abi' (my Father). The form Jesus used is, apparently, the word used in the home, in the family. Jesus is saying to us that we should trust God in the way that children trust their fathers to give them food and clothes. Hence, in the Lord's Prayer' "Give us this day our daily bread..." This, the scholars say, was so much the expression used by Jesus and his disciples that it was also used, unchanged, in the vocabulary of Gentiles when they became Christians.
I am indebted to Professor F. F. Bruce of the University of Manchester in his "New Testament History" for comments on these uses of Aramaic forms of the word 'Father'. He goes on to point out that Paul states that when the Gentile Christians call God 'Abba' it is a token that they have received the Spirit of Jesus which, in turn, makes the Gentile Christians sons of God.
These comments are, I suggest, a profound reminder to us of our need to be very careful in our own approach to the Lord's Prayer because, as Professor Bruce observed, Jesus was the man who had the power to address God as 'Abba' and who included sinners in the kingdom by allowing us to repeat this one word 'Abba, dear Father'. There can be no greater gift.
Bob Mclean
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