Forgetting Everything You Never Had To Remember

We grew up in Gadsden. Kids in Gadsden didn’t think it a small town. We’d all seen places with more farms than car dealerships; where they had only one grocery store. Those were the small towns.

When my tenth-grade English teacher suggested we could relate to John Cougar Mellencamp’s "Small Town," we stared at him blankly. He countered, suggesting Gadsden was small compared to, say, Los Angeles. We shrugged and granted him that.

Nowadays, my parents, my brother and I all live in the Birmingham area. It's different, but I don't usually think of it as different. Again, next to L.A., Birmingham, too, is a small town. I don't think about Gadsden and Birmingham being different, except when I visit Gadsden.

Remembering

One time a while back, my brother and I stopped in Gadsden on our way to Henagar—the kind of place we considered a small town when we lived in Gadsden. Our parents sent us to pick up beef from the processor—near to where the cow was born and raised. They were into eating local before that was a thing.

In Gadsden we drove through a Hardee's for breakfast. The woman at the window called my brother baby doll. Of course, she did. That wasn't surprising. What surprised me was that I had forgotten the women at fast food places in Gadsden call you baby doll.

How does that happen? How does the new thing become so normal that one forgets the old thing, when the old thing was once the only thing? It could be that we had misunderstood the old thing all along.

Rethinking

As a kid, I thought I was growing up in a suburb, but a city has to be urban to have suburbs. Gadsden had neighborhoods. In a collection of suburbs you find homogeneity that just doesn’t exist in neighborhoods.

In Gadsden, some folks were more country than others. We all knew that. Every day, we interacted with people along different bands of the country spectrum. Out in the county, we encountered folks who shaded more or less country, but that never caught us off guard. Because on any given day you might meet a person in Gadsden who was more country than the standard in the small towns.

Not Returning

In the suburbs, however, we’re not so versatile. We expect each other to sound like we’ve always been here. When asked, we’re sure we remember otherwise, but the din of our monotone dialect makes it easy to forget. Maybe Mellencamp understands the two sides of this coin.

No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me

Mellencamp sings "Small Town" from the perspective of someone who’s still in the small town. Why does he need to warn himself against forgetting where he came from if he’s still there? In that line, we might be hearing a sentiment truer to the songwriter than to the song, but there’s another possibility.

Just before the self-admonition against forgetting, Mellencamp—or his narrator—makes a confession.

Married an L.A. Doll and brought her to this small town
Now she's small town just like me

Somewhere in his story, the singer left the small town, and leaving did something to him—so that even after returning he has to remind himself not to forget where he came from. He needs this reminder despite the small-town ethos being so strong that his L.A. doll doesn’t flinch when the lady at Hardee’s calls her sweetheart. That’s the part I don’t know anything about.

I have not gone home again, let alone taken someone back with me. Moreover, I must have looked like a guy who wouldn’t be coming back.

Reflecting

I worked at a tool-and-die shop between high school and college. Near the end of the summer, a welder offered the advice John Cougar Mellencamp wasn’t there to give. Don’t forget where you came from.

Here in the suburbs—where we all sound like we’ve always been here—I know that on some level I have forgotten where I came from.

Otherwise, I’d still know my brother is a baby doll. We could hit 10 drive-throughs in Gadsden today, and he’d hear it—or the same sentiment—seven times. In Attalla, he’d go 10 for 10. That just doesn’t happen in Birmingham, in Vestavia Hills, in Hoover—usually not even Pelham. As for Los Angeles, I cannot say.

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Finding Rest Amid The Raucous

Do you ever freak out a little at bedtime?

At one point last year, I had a couple weeks when every night I feared I would die in my sleep. It really caught me off guard. Why was I thinking this way?

Then I realized, after almost ten years without attending a funeral, I had been to two in as many months. Makes a guy think about things.

I tried combating my distress with the following thoughts: God sustains us every breath, and—from the Apostles’ Creed—'I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.'

After a couple weeks of still waking up alive every morning, things went back to normal. I remember those nights when I read the last verse of Psalm 4.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Earlier in this psalm, David laments living among the mockers. These mockers ridicule those who trust in the Lord. Worse still, they prosper financially, though all they provide the community is strife.

Despite the raucous, however, David finds true rest. He does so for one reason—'you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.’

The world tempts us to draw comfort from provisions, rather than from the Provider.

Maybe business is good, or a stressful situation turned out fine. But these things bring only temporary relief. In Psalm 4, David relies on eternal hope.

What about you and me? Why do we lie down and sleep in peace?

The Lord's Prayer: Amen

It’s the final word in most prayers that we pray, but we can say it with the most confidence at the end of this prayer—the one our Lord teaches us to pray.

We aspire to pray in the name of Jesus. When we pray this prayer, we pray in the words of Jesus.

We hope even, by the Holy Spirit, to pray with the same heart of Jesus—the heart of obedience.
When we get to the end of this prayer, we confess that all we have just said is true, and we ask the Father to make it more and more our true desire.

Here are my two main conclusions from all the preceding reflections. Firstly, we say the Lord’s Prayer in order to shape us. As with diet and exercise and other habits and practices, the things we do every day make us who we are.

When we confess these things regularly, we remind ourselves of their truth, and we remind ourselves that we need to be reminded of these truths.

When we say these things over and over, we better understand ourselves, and we help ourselves to live by these truths outside the prayer closet. That brings us to the second conclusion.

There is great freedom in praying just, “your will be done.” Have you ever wondered whether to pray for a certain thing? Sometimes, when I’m unsure, I refrain. 

Instead, I think about the thing as I’m saying, “your will be done.” Leave it in the Father’s court.
Let the prayer guide you to trust that he knows what is best, and that—whatever it is—he’s got his eye on it, and he’s going to take care of it.

When we pray for the Father’s will to be done, we know we can follow that with' amen.' We know that we have confessed truth, and we know we have spoken words we can trust—words both from and to the One we can trust.

The Lord's Prayer: Forever

When we add ‘forever’ to the three preceding confessions, we commit ourselves to always ascribing these things only to the Father. It's both a confession and petition because, while the Father is faithful, we—by nature—are not.

So we petition him for grace to always recognize that the kingdom is his alone, and likewise the power and the glory.

We do not bring about the kingdom. The kingdom does not advance by our power. The kingdom does not reign for our glory. We make this confession, and we pray for grace to remember that these things belong wholly to the Father, both now and forever!

The Lord's Prayer: The Kingdom, The Power, The Glory

We end the prayer by confessing that these three things—the kingdom, the power, and the glory—belong to the Father.

Everything we’ve said already is true because the kingdom, the power, and the glory all belong wholly to the Father.

The Kingdom

We have already prayed for his kingdom to rule over all the earth. Now, we emphasize that this kingdom we're looking for belongs solely to him.

He makes the rules. He decides all matters. He alone will say when.

We pray for the kingdom to come, but we don’t make it happen. We don’t bring it about by our own means—and certainly not on our own terms!

We get ideas about the way things should look, but we surrender them. We look to the Father and say, ‘Yours is the kingdom.'

The Power

The Father alone has the power both to provide the things he already knows we need, and to bring about the reign and rule of his kingdom.

While various earthly kingdoms stake claims to power, only the Father’s power sustains creation. Only the gospel holds the power for salvation.

When a person confesses the Lordship of Jesus, and believes that God—by his power—raised him from the dead, it doesn’t look like the coming of any earthly kingdom. It isn’t.

It’s the coming of a kingdom advanced by a wholly different sort of power, and that power belongs solely to our Father!

The Glory

As the Father alone has the power to establish his kingdom, so also does he alone deserve the credit. Giving him proper credit doesn’t encompass the meaning of glory. Glory is another thing we don’t yet truly understand. We understand it just about enough to know it belongs only to the Father.

Or, do we?

It’s easier to see that the kingdom and power are his, but surely some fraction of the glory belongs to us, right? We are, after all, bothering to pray—on top of everything we do outside the prayer closet for the church, for others, etc.

So we need his glory joined to the kingdom and the power—things we more easily understand are beyond our possession—in this confession.

And if this final thing we confess as belonging solely to the Father reminds us of Psalm 115:1 (Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory . . .), then we begin and end the Lord’s Prayer by hallowing the Father’s name.

The Lord's Prayer: Are We Done Yet?

Before we discuss the final few words of the prayer, let’s consider whether we already have.

Many Bible translations include, “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever,” only as a footnote.

The ESV Study Bible note says this closing was likely a later scribal addition. They also point out how the traditional closing echoes a line from one of David’s prayers.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chron. 29:11)

Should we include this closing, if we know we’re doing so more from tradition than from Scripture? Personally, I do. Tradition is part of how we do things. That’s even a biblical idea.

One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. Psalm 145:4

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:1

As Stanley Hauerwas puts it, Christianity is something handed down to us; we don’t get to make it up as we go along.

It’s good to be mindful that this closing may not have been original to Matthew’s Gospel. It’s also good, in my opinion, to conclude the prayer with this traditional confession.

What say you?