DAILY BYTE
Over the last few weeks we have been slowly journeying our way through the Lord’s Prayer, stopping virtually at each sentence to appreciate the sheer depth of meaning that is there. However, you may have noticed a common theme woven into each sentence so far – one that emerges if we look again at the prayer as a whole.
We pray ‘OUR Father’ not MY father. We pray ‘hallowed be YOUR name,’ not hallowed be MY name. We say ‘YOUR kingdom come,’ meaning my kingdom GO. And then we say ‘YOUR will be done,’ we don’t ask for our will to be done.
Jesus teaches us that prayer is not about aligning God’s will with our own, rather it is about aligning our will with his.
And when we do that, when we pray like that, when we live like that, then something beautiful happens. Heaven finds earth.
For ‘it will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ remember?
Like when Mother Theresa was still alive. We would see images of one of the most famous woman in the world, bending down to spoon porridge into the mouth of a little child in a miserable Calcutta slum. God’s will being done. Heaven meeting earth in a moment of profound beauty.
Or like the time Martin Luther King Jnr was preaching and mid-way through the service, he heard news that his house had just been firebombed. He rushed home to find his family shaken but safe. He then addressed an angry crowd gathered outside his home, bent on revenge and already armed with bats and knives and guns. He urged them not to respond with violence, but to follow Jesus in his way of loving enemies. God’s will. Heaven meeting earth.
Or like some ordinary person ... maybe you ... reaching out to another in response to God. Reaching out beyond yourself, seeking to love as you have been loved. Once more, God’s will being fulfilled and heaven meeting earth.
This is why the very centre of the Lord’s Prayer is asking for God’s will to be done because it is the very centre of what is means to follow Jesus.
For let us not forget that when Jesus prayed before his crucifixion ‘Your will be done,’ this was not stoic resignation, it was not ‘what will be, will be’. Rather it was ‘O God, I trust in your love so much, that I will choose your way of love even if it costs me my life.’
For God does not will suffering on us, but he does expect us to courageously follow his way of love even if that leads to suffering.
True to his prayer, Jesus did not back down from loving to the point that he spent his last ragged, dying breath serving the cause of love ... ‘Father, forgive them,’ he said, ‘For they know not what they do.’
Yes, in that moment heaven truly met earth. And whenever a disciple of Jesus, one of us, searches our hearts and struggles our way through these words – ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ – well, that is a moment where heaven kisses earth within us.
And it is beautiful to God.
PRAY AS YOU GO
God of Grace, may you help us to freely choose your will as our way of life. May your will be done, and may heaven meet earth within us all. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Matthew 26. 42 NRSV
Again he went away for the second time and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”
