Your Will Fulfilling

 

I’m doing something different today. I keep noticing something. I’ve been noticing it for months now.

All the prayers, all the Jesus memes, all the religiously motivated “I’ll bet no-one is brave enough to repost this” entries on Facebook all seem to have something in common: They all want to persuade us to join the God Club, and hint that once we’ve paid our dues, God will give us what we want.

All these prayers seem to want something from God.

They seem to say, “Give me what I need,” or “Make this thing go away that’s hurting me.”

But, is prayer really just about asking God for something?

What if we have it backwards?

What if prayer is all about what we give God?

What if prayer is that active inner movement that answers God?

What if the answer to prayer is just one endless, eternal response— us to God, and God to us?

What if, when we pray, we just say

Here I am, God, what do you want?

Doesn’t that sound a little bit like, “Thy will be done?”

Why do we forget that we have already been taught how to pray?

The word translated as “Come” in the Lord’s Prayer can also mean “go;” “enter;” and “alight” as in a bird landing on a branch.

What if that old phrase “kingdom come” meant something more like “enter your territory”?

 

“Our Source Beyond, Holy is your Name,

Your domain entering, Your will fulfilling, below as above.

Entrust us today with the Bread of Life*

and pass over our faults as we also pass over others’ faults—

And do not put us to the proof but drag us out of the danger of evil.

 

 

*(Greek: epiousios artos – lit. ‘super-substantial bread’)

{Note: the Greek word epiousios appears nowhere else in the NT but in the Lord’s prayer!}