So begins the most well-known prayer on the planet.  Many of us can recite it from memory.  And yet, we often do so without thinking much about the prayer itself.

Martin Luther suggested we combat this tendency by praying it line by line, stopping at each phrase to consider how those particular words might apply for us in our own context.

For instance in the Small Catechism, Luther writes on the petition for daily bread:

What then does “daily bread” mean?   

Everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.