Readings and Themes for the Week of July 25, 2010

Readings for Faith Sharing
Week of July 25, 2010,
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading I Genesis 18: 20-32

Abraham bargained with God for the safety of the innocent.

Psalm 138

"Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me."

Reading II Colossians 2:12-14

God nailed our sins to the cross of Christ.

Gospel Luke 11:1-13

Jesus teaches us to pray and reminds us to persevere in prayer.

THEME:

The Lord’s Prayer is a map for life.

Today’s readings teach us about various aspects of prayer. Abraham’s conversation with God reveals that prayer is quite often marked by persistence. In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives us the great gift of the Lord’s Prayer. After offering this prayer, Jesus then outlines the kind of lives those who utter this prayer are called to live. Let us be attentive to God’s saving word.

Questions of the week

Question for Children:

Prayer is talking with God and listening to God in our hearts.

Where do you talk to God and how do you listen to what God says to you?

Question for Youth:

Jesus teaches us how important it is to pray.

How do you ask God for what you need and how do you listen for his response?

Question for Adults:

Jesus teaches us how to pray.

When did you take time to pray this past week and to talk to and listen to God?

Bulletin Bites
"Lord, teach us to pray!"

Abraham bargains to save Sodom. He starts out with fifty innocent people. God agrees. Obviously lacking confidence he will find fifty, he bargains God down to ten. He could not even find ten, so Sodom is destroyed. The Old Testament covenants with God. God always kept his part. The patriarchs and Israelites were not so faithful. The disciples saw Jesus as a person who was faithful to the Covenant and a man of prayer. They asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” He teaches them the Our Father. Then He tells the stories of the persistent woman and father who give their children bread and eggs, not snakes and scorpions. Are we confident when we pray to God, Our Father in heaven, that His Kingdom, not ours, will come, that His will, not ours, be done, for our daily bread, not tomorrow's or next year's, and to forgive our sins as we forgive others? Are we good stewards who are persistent in prayer to learn God's will? If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving may not be your thing. Try prayer instead, and keep trying.