I was reading Sirach recently and came across the beginning of Chapter 23, addressed as a prayer to God: Lord, Father and Master of my life.....
It helps to know here that the word translated as "Lord" in all of our Bibles is really Yahweh in the Hebrew. The Jews would not pronounce the Sacred Name, so they inserted the vowels for Adonai (Lord) in their scriptures. However, the Jewish mind was conditioned to know that "Lord" was code for Yahweh, the Name God gave to Moses. Our minds have no such conditioning; to me, the appellation "Lord" is more abstract and less personal than Yahweh. The former is a title; the latter a name, much as the English custom of calling someone "Lord Wentworth" rather than "James."
So let us begin again with Yahweh, Father and Master of my life....
Immediately, this prayer has a different feel to it. Somehow, it feels as if God has immediately drawn closer to us, listening....
I venture to guess that most of us begin our prayers with " O God," followed by our requests, without recognizing or thinking about Who God is, Who is the Person we address in our prayer. And yet....spending some time recognizing the One to Whom we speak adds so much to our prayer and to our relationship with the Divine Being. For the writer of Sirach, God is "Father and Master of my life," and the prayer thus becomes even more meaningful as he asks to be protected from careless speech that inadvertently harms others.
I have asked people who God is to them, and the first answer is usually "Creator." or "Lord." We don't get much beyond that, but then, they are not really in prayer, so the question is not fair in a sense. Once we assume the attitude of prayer, however, we begin to move into another dimension, and the Holy Spirit comes to our aid, teaching us what to say.
One of the greatest helps to knowing Who God Is is the Psalms. For example, Psalm 17 says, To you I call, for you will surely heed me, O God. Turn your ear to me; hear my words. Guard me as the apple of your eye; in the shadow of your wings protect me. Turning this prayer into recognition of God's Person might look like this:
Yahweh, You are the One who turns your ear to me and hears my words. You guard me as the apple of your eye and protect me in the shadow of your wings.....Knowing this, I turn to You in my distress. Help me, O Lord!
Now, recognizing the One to Whom we pray, we have more confidence that our prayers are heard--- not because of who we are, but because of Who He Is!
