URC Daily Devotion 6 November 2025
St Matthew 6: 9 – 14
Jesus said:
‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Reflection
Have you noticed something odd about The Lord’s Prayer? Like, it’s not the Lord’s prayer? (unless you live in Scotland! Ed)
If you know the traditional version, you’ll find the first part familiar, but perhaps the end tripped you up. Neither ‘Lead us not into temptation’ nor ‘deliver us from evil’ are quite what Jesus said. Does it matter? Yes and no.
No, because Jesus wasn’t telling us to recite his exact words as such, but Yes, if the words we say give us a distorted picture of God.
Lead us not into temptation: The word Jesus used can mean tempting to evil deeds, like the satan trying to make Jesus sin (Mk 1:13), or the teachers of the law trying to catch Jesus saying something wrong (Lk 10:25), but I really don’t think this is the sense used here. Do we picture God gleefully trying to make us sin and we must beg a malevolent deity not to be nasty? I hope not, ‘cos God ain’t like that. A better sense is testing or trial, like when you test how strong a girder is by loading it with weights. We’re asking God to steer us clear of situations that we’d find hard to bear. It goes in a pair with the line after (common in Hebrew poetry): don’t bring us to [this bad thing], but rescue us from [that bad thing].
Deliver us from evil: A small point, but Matthew said, ‘the evil’, not evil in general and, just as in English, it means a person with that trait: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly means the good (people) the bad (people) and the ugly (people). So Matthew’s prayer is better translated as ‘rescue us from the evil one’, and that’s very different from asking that we never encounter anything evil. As Christians we’re supposed to be around the evil stuff in the world. ‘Cos what’s the point of lighting a lamp in a room that’s already bright?
Prayer
Father God,
thank you that you allow us to be tested,
but never more than we can bear.
Thank you that you rescue us from the evil one,
and give us strength to be light in dark places.
Give us grace, we pray,
to carry your love, peace and hope
into the hurts of your beloved but broken world.
Amen.