When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, he teaches them what we know of as the ‘Our Father'.

God is our father and, like our earthly parents, we as their children, usually tend to be like them. As the saying goes, “the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree”.

We, as the children of God, have fallen pretty far from the tree, but God, as our father, has come looking for us to bring us back into the family from where we have fallen.

God became incarnate for our sake, came all the way down to where we are in order to bring us back home to where He is.

Jesus says to his disciples, just before his crucifixion, “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2-3)

The Apostle Paul also, says this in his epistle to the Romans:

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

If we are led, not solely by our own thinking about things, but by the Spirit of God that God shares with us, we become once more, in truth, the children of God, as we were originally created to be.

He continues: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ…”

We are the children of God and heirs of His Kingdom, due to inherit the Kingdom, joint heirs along with Jesus, Paul tells us, adding this very difficult stipulation: “…joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

How exactly has Jesus suffered? In what way, that we must suffer with him in order to be glorified together with him and inherit the Kingdom prepared for us?

Jesus is God, outside and above all of creation, not subject to any of the laws or limitations that we have become subject to in this world.

And yet, He came down and became just like us, just like one of his own creatures, subject to the same laws and limitations that we have fallen under, intentionally, so that by experiencing exactly what we are forced to experience on a day to day basis, by sympathetic mercy, he might save us from what we had become subject to and bring us back to the kind of life that He, Himself lives, that we were originally intended to have.

We take for granted the galling limitations of Time, Space and Physics, no matter how much they chafe, no matter how often we run up against them, we accept them as 'par for the course', when actually the suffering, discomfort and displeasure we experience from them is meant to be a constant reminder that this world is not our home, that we were created for Paradise and are intended for the Kingdom of God.

So, when we begin to recognize what we have lost and that the life that we have become familiar with, a life of illness and corruption and accident and death, is not the life that God meant for us, and we suffer because of it, as Christ must have suffered by coming down from Heaven into all of this, not because He had to, but only for our sake, then we can be saved, glorified and inherit the Kingdom as we are meant to.

Paul continues by saying this: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

That is a pretty bold statement considering everything that we have suffered throughout history and are continuing to suffer today!

But then he goes on to say something even more incredible and, what I consider to be the ‘End Product' of all of this:

“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (Romans 8:14-21)

In other words, not only ourselves, but all of creation, which has become subject to the ‘bondage of corruption’ along with us, through no fault of it's own, but simply because of our authority over it, the entire Cosmos, will be redeemed, transformed and transfigured along with us, the reinstated children of God.

What exactly will that look like for us?

“…as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

And then, there is this:

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

Jesus is not only our Lord, God and Savior, but the example of what He created each one of us to be like in the first place.

While, on the one hand, we are speaking here about the culmination of our earthly life, on the other hand, we can begin to enter in and to live in a ‘foretaste’ of the Life of the World to come, even now, if only we know the art of prayer and are willing to practice it.

For those who have ears, let them see…