Lead Us Not Into Temptation

By Peter Bowden

 


The old man had prayed those words every Sunday since he was a boy. Lead us not into temptation. They came as naturally as breathing, tucked between familiar phrases that had long ago become part of the rhythm of his life. Yet it was only after seventy years that he began to wonder whether temptation had ever looked the way he imagined. It rarely arrived wearing horns or carrying obvious darkness. More often, it came dressed as impatience in the grocery line, pride after a compliment, anger at a careless stranger, or the quiet certainty that his own hurt mattered more than someone else's. Temptation, he realized, was usually ordinary. It entered through doors left carelessly open.

One autumn afternoon, he walked a trail through the woods where sunlight spilled between the oaks in long golden ribbons. Fallen leaves whispered beneath his boots, and somewhere ahead a woodpecker hammered faithfully at a tree no one else seemed to notice. He stopped beside a narrow stream and watched the water divide around a stone before joining itself again farther downstream. The prayer returned to him there. Perhaps God did not promise to remove every stone from the river. Perhaps the prayer was simply asking to be shown the better channel. Lead me around what will harden my heart. Lead me away from the words I cannot take back. Lead me beyond the roads that look easy but leave me farther from love. The stream kept moving, never arguing with the rocks, only finding another way.

When he reached home that evening, nothing in the world had changed. Bills still waited on the kitchen table. His knees still ached when he climbed the porch steps. The evening news still offered enough reasons to surrender hope. But something inside him had become lighter. He understood at last that temptation was not merely about great sins waiting in dark corners. It was every invitation to become a little less kind, less patient, or less forgiving than he had been the day before. And the prayer was not one of fear but of trust. It was the simple request of a traveler holding out his hand to a Father who knew the road better than he did. Lead me. Sometimes that was all a faithful heart ever needed to say.

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