Luke as the Gospel of the Prayer

Last Friday, I ended my blog with a brief comment about praying in school on the day after 9-11. This past week I have been thinking about prayer in the New Testament and in particular, prayer in the writings of Luke. No doubt last Sunday, Sun and Shield’s blog with the title, Prayer in the New Testament, http://sunandshield.blogspot.com/2005/07/prayer-in-new-testament.html was a factor. The author concluded that members of the NT church primarily prayed for each other.

Prayer is certainly a significant theme in the Lucan writings. The Gospel opens with God’s people at prayer and closes with the believers joyfully blessing God in the Temple. I have been thinking about both the unique terminology used by Luke and the unique context in which this terminology is used. Two passages at the beginning of the Gospel may link the OT idea of prayer to the proper understanding of Jesus’ ministry of prayer although I need to consider more thoroughly the significance of the OT connnection and whether or not this needs to be included in the discussion. It seems to me that the direction in Acts 6:4 that the Twelve are to engage in “prayer and ministry of the word” represents the proper implementation of the teachings of the gospel.

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