Oh to grace how great a debtor...

All of my life I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer using different words as times have changed... Our Father and Mother instead of just Our Father... but one phrase has remained the same in meaning. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses against us... The interpretation of this phrase has remained constant. The quality of forgiveness for ourselves depends upon the forgiveness we extend to others. The gospel story of the man imprisoned for failure to pay his debts who is forgiven by the ruler only to imprison those who owe him is the foundational text for this reading of the prayer.
I am coming to a new hearing of these old words in this most important prayer. Sitting in a new congregation so different from all those I have known before, the Presbyterian version of this prayer startles me every Sunday with the words “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I almost always stumble through the first part of this phrase catching up on “our debtors”. One Sunday a retired minister stood and said this particular phrase had meaning for Presbyterians because they were in their history shopkeepers and owners who often were called to forgive the debts owed them by those who could not or would not pay.
I sit sometimes in worship after the Prayer contemplating my debts, what I owe, what promissory notes I have signed in my life. I owe my parents for their loving care even when I was unlovely. I owe my children who taught me the dance steps for the circle of life. I owe my grandchildren for the pure unbridled joy they bring to my life. I owe my pastors who have each given me words every Sunday that often caught my God imagination and pushed me closer to my Creator. I owe my husband Michael who has worked to support us financially and keeps me from floating off into the ether of introversion. I owe my friends who continue to gather round for fun and frolic and come when I holler for help. I owe my God for life and sustaining love that will not let me go even when the way is shrouded in darkness.
“Oh to Grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” Please Lord, bind me and remind me of my debts. Seal me in your heart so that my wanderings will always lead back to you. Amen.