You never get all the goodness out of Scripture in one pass. It takes a lifetime of repeated reading. The Lord's Prayer is designed to be repeated, it's designed to be lived with. The whole of Scripture rewards repeated reading, but there are few passages that repay regular return quite as richly as the Lord's Prayer.

"Our Father in heaven,

May your name be kept holy.

May your kingdom come.

May your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven."

Our Father in Heaven could start any of these three requests. And that final phrase, "on earth as it is in heaven", doesn't just belong to the last line. It colours all three.

Once we begin hearing the prayer this way, it opens up a whole new depth for us. The prayer is carefully shaped. Jesus gives us these parallel lines for a reason. They invite us to meditate. Putting these lines together helps us to discover beauty and depth we wouldn’t otherwise see. We are invited to chew.

And as we chew on them, these words feed not just our minds but our souls. That's why repeating the Lord's Prayer isn't the kind of empty repetition Jesus warned against. We're not babbling to a distant deity. We're praying to our Father. Every time we return to these words, we are placing ourselves inside them and allowing them to shape us.

Scripture invites us to see that we are part of the answer. The prayer is answered in us by our lives being changed by it. As we are changed, God’s name is honoured on earth as it is in heaven. Each time we pray it, we place ourselves again in God’s hands. We ask him to shape our hearts, renew our minds, and make us more like him. We pray for God’s purpose and reputation to be restored.

And as we keep returning to these words, God uses them to form us. Slowly, often quietly, our lives begin to reflect more of his character, and his name is honoured through us.

Matthew 28:16–20

“I have been given all authority” is the declaration of a King. Jesus is claiming the rightful authority of the risen Lord. Jesus says that after His resurrection, the territory of His Kingdom is heaven and earth - the realm where His word is law.

From the beginning, creation was designed for heaven and earth to belong together but human rebellion tore them apart. Jesus came to heal that division.

How will the nations learn that all authority belongs to Jesus? Disciples are to go and make disciples. A follower of Jesus must have a worldwide vision. Vision requires action. It calls us to serve, to organise, to give, to participate. Our service and our participation doesn't finish with us but we must prepare our minds for the possibility that we will be that person that God wants to go out to the ends of the earth. Becoming involved in organising for, praying and giving to world-mission is a normal part of our discipleship.

He speaks of the duration of His authority: to the end of the age. One day heaven and earth will be fully united. As Paul writes:

“Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power… The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
1 Corinthians 15:24–26

Jesus told his disciples to make disciples because we must first become disciples ourselves before helping others become one. There is both receiving and giving. Learning and teaching. Being formed and helping form others. This is describing a continuing process. We are formed as we become involved in helping others to be formed. So some questions to ask ourselves.

Are we:

• allowing ourselves to receive from another?
• open to someone else’s insight?
• humble enough to listen?
• making ourselves vulnerable enough to share what we have learned?
• speaking into another person’s life for their good?

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

- Acts 1:6-11

Thursday was Ascension Day. We’ve forgotten what it means, and we mostly pass it by without a second thought. But it belongs alongside Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Because the Ascension isn't just the moment Jesus left - it's the moment he became King.

Imagine a coronation in the ancient world. Imagine and struggle against enemies and threats. Imagine the king overcoming his enemies and then riding victorious into his capital city. Imagine the declaration of the victory - the euangelion going out across the country.

That's exactly what we see in the Creed we recite together: he descended, he rose, he ascended. These aren't three separate events. It’s a single act of cosmic conquest. Jesus walked deliberately into death's stronghold and walked back out. And then he was seated at the right hand of the Father. That's seated - not standing, and not waiting. That's the posture of a king whose rule has been established.

We live in a world that often feels as though the wrong forces are in charge — chaos more real than order, death stronger than life. The Ascension doesn't pretend that the chaos isn't real, but it does declare that chaos does not have the last word. The King is on his throne. The decisive battle has already been fought and won. In the book of Revelation, the ascended Jesus says: "I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever - and I hold the keys of death and Hades."

It is true, in Churchill's famous words, that “It is not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning”. Jesus told his disciples: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth." The Kingdom now advances - and is declared - through his people, empowered by his Spirit. In our places, in our times, that's us.

As Paul puts it in Romans 8, creation itself is groaning, waiting for the people of God to live in line with the victory King Jesus won.