Well, it's Friday again on things unseen, and we've reached the conclusion of a week of reflections on the Lord's Prayer, and we've come to the final petition.

I imagine you know that the doxology at the end, for thine is the kingdom and the

power and the glory forever, amen, was probably added by the early church. So the last original

petition is, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil or from the evil one.

These may be two petitions, but if so, they are a parallelism.

The second request fills out the first one.

Don't lead us into temptation, but if we are led into temptation, deliver us from its evil

or from the evil one.

And there's something about this petition that I think makes us ask a question, perhaps more

than one question.

But one question is certainly this.

What is meant here by temptation? The Greek word

that's used here, pyrasmus, can mean simply a test or a trial. Or, of course, it can

actually mean solicitation to sin. So which is it here? Well, we're all weak and no matter how strong we may

think we are, there are situations in life that can very easily break us. And so at one level,

obviously, we want to ask God to protect us.

At the same time, we know that difficult experiences will come.

So we ask him to protect us from any evil in them.

In a sense, we're simply praying, Father, make Psalm 23 come true in my life so that even

if I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I'll fear no evil because you are with me,

and your rod and your staff comfort me.

And if that's true of trials, difficult experiences, it's also true of temptations to sin.

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