A Lesson in Talking with God

At a retreat there was an exercise: draw the face of God, or rather its expression at the moment you speak to him. In the oval of the head the speaker put one large question mark, because his own father had left when he was six and for over thirty years there was no relationship between them. That scene opens a sermon about the single word Jesus tells us to begin prayer with: Father (Luke 11). The rest fits into three words we teach children: thank you, sorry and please. Listen if the word Father sounds to you more like a reproach than an invitation.