{"id":247,"date":"2020-10-22T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=247"},"modified":"2020-12-06T20:20:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T01:20:30","slug":"continental-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/22\/continental-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Continental Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A humble building known as the Abbot Pass Hut is one of the Western Hemisphere\u2019s most intriguing structures.
 
It was constructed 98 years ago as a shelter for mountaineers attempting to scale either Mount Victoria or Mount Lefroy, two of the higher peaks in Banff Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.  The hut continues to serve as an overnight waystation for hikers and climbers. 
 
What makes it famous is its location.  It sits in Abbot Pass (9,598 feet above sea level) directly astride North America\u2019s hydrological watershed \u2013 the imaginary line popularly known as the Continental Divide. 
 
If a raindrop or snowflake falls on the eastern half of the hut\u2019s roof, it will eventually make its way to Hudson Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  Precipitation that falls on the western half of the roof winds up in the Pacific Ocean.  To spend a night in the Abbot Pass Hut is to teeter on the mountainous \u201crooftop\u201d of the Western world.  Depending on which direction you turn when you step outside in the morning, you\u2019ll be heading downhill \u2013 toward either one or the other of the world\u2019s two greatest bodies of water. 
 
Most people who cross the Continental Divide on paved highways hardly notice it \u2013 unless they see an information sign informing them they have just surmounted the watershed. 
 
Things are a bit different on the pages of Scripture.
 
Just a half dozen chapters into the New Testament, there\u2019s a sudden and dramatic change in how people pray \u2013 specifically, in how they picture the God to whom they are directing their heartfelt requests.  We might call it the Bible\u2019s Continental Divide. 
 
Before Matthew 6, God is addressed formally, even fearfully.  On the pages of the Old Testament, God is our Maker, Sustainer, Consuming Fire, Shield, Rock, and Strong Tower.  He is the Lord Almighty, high and lifted up. 
 
After Matthew 6, however, people begin to address God as \u201cDaddy.\u201d  How in the world does this happen?
 
It happens because of the opening words of the Lord\u2019s Prayer. 
 
It\u2019s worth noting that prayer is the only activity in the four Gospels for which Jesus\u2019 disciples specifically request training.  We never hear them asking, \u201cLord, teach us how to share our faith, or cast out demons, or run a capital campaign that will really impress the Episcopalians.\u201d  The disciples would have been fully trained in the first century Judaic disciplines of prayer.  But in Jesus they observe something different going on.  So they ask an expert to mentor them \u2013 \u201cLord, teach us how to pray\u201d \u2013 just as we might say, \u201cPatrick Mahomes, teach us how to throw touchdowns while scrambling,\u201d or, \u201cWarren Buffett, teach us how to turn a few dollars into millions.\u201d
 
In response, Jesus doesn\u2019t give a lecture.  He prays an actual prayer. 
 
Most Bible scholars agree that when Jesus says in Matthew 6:9-13, \u201cThis, then, is how you should pray,\u201d he\u2019s not locking us into these specific words.  It takes approximately 18 seconds to speak the words of the Lord\u2019s Prayer, and I know of at least one Bible teacher who believes Jesus was telling us we should never pray longer than 18 seconds. 
 
Assuming instead that Matthew 6 provides a general model for sustaining a conversation with God, let\u2019s take a closer look at the Lord\u2019s Prayer today and over the next few mornings. 
 
It begins with two stunning words:  Our Father.<\/strong> 
 
It would have been entirely appropriate for Jesus to have said, \u201cMy<\/u><\/em> Father.\u201d He is, after all, the only true Son of God.  We are God\u2019s children by spiritual adoption<\/em>.  But by using the word \u201cour,\u201d Jesus is inviting us into the family conversation. 
 
Using the word \u201cFather\u201d is like crossing the boundary into an entirely new way of relating to God.  Even though the Messiah is described as \u201cthe everlasting Father\u201d in Isaiah\u2019s famous prophecy so often quoted at Christmas (Isaiah 9:6), there\u2019s no evidence that anyone in Israel\u2019s history had ever had the audacity, in private prayer, to address the Lord in such a familiar way. 
 
Nobody, that is, until Jesus.
 
But there\u2019s more.  Jesus uses the word abba<\/em>, which is the Aramaic word for \u201cDaddy\u201d or \u201cPoppy.\u201d This is the language of the street, the rhetoric of the nursery \u2013 the word a toddler would use when asking for a drink of milk, or when seeking comfort in the middle of a midnight thunderstorm.   Children don\u2019t know any better than to say, \u201cDaddy, I need you right now!\u201d  That\u2019s how Jesus instructs his disciples to pray.
 
Which is why the Lord\u2019s Prayer is the Bible\u2019s spiritual watershed.    
 
Before Jesus, God is someone who just might scare us to death.  We cannot fathom his holiness and perfection.  Isn’t our own unholiness and imperfection an automatic disqualifier for a conversation with the Divine?  After Jesus, however, the door to God\u2019s back porch is open.  Against all expectation, we\u2019re being beckoned to cross the threshold and kick off our shoes.   
 
It\u2019s a dreadful thing to spend a night wavering between two very different visions of God \u2013 to be stuck in a \u201chut\u201d wondering if God is your enemy or if God is your ally. 
 
The next morning when you wake up, which way should you turn?
 
Jesus invites us to step onto the path that he himself followed \u2013 to believe that, by his grace, we are the treasured children of a Papa who will never let us go.     
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A humble building known as the Abbot Pass Hut is one of the Western Hemisphere\u2019s most intriguing structures. It was constructed 98 years ago as a shelter for mountaineers attempting to scale either Mount Victoria or Mount Lefroy, two of the higher peaks in Banff Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.  The hut continues to serve as an overnight waystation for hikers… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-our-father"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}