father love

“Thy will be done”. “Your will be done”. Every Christian in the world, whether Catholic, Episcopalian, Protestant, Baptist, Reformed, Born again … all denominations, every one of them will say those words at least, once or twice, during the week. What do those words mean? What do you mean when you say them?

What are we really saying when we pray the Our Father, and utter these words? It is not a meaningless phrase, just one more line to be raced through as we say (pray) the prayer. We are telling God that we acknowledge His Deity, His Supreme Being. We, His creatures live only to do His will. Though we have a free will, we forego that luxury and tell Him we want to, and will to, accept His wishes, whether joyous or sorrowful. We will not try to bend nor shape the events so that they are more pleasant to us. We trust Him and know that whatever He foresees and permits will be beneficial to us; and so, we accept the events, as they are. Unfortunately, many times we think ‘beneficial to us’ as meaning good things happening to us. We pray like, “Lord, God, we will accept all the joyousness You can throw at us. The Sad, well ehh, not so much”.

We forget that this all-loving God, Who exists outside the box of time, sees the past (our past), present and future in the same instant. He sees all the problems we have let ourselves fall into, He allows the present to happen because He knows and sees the good that can come from it, and He permits all that the future has in store for us, for the same reason. This is not His determination because He truly allows our free will to work, to function, to be directed by us. But one thing He does do is to love us, as only an all-loving God can. So when death, or sickness, or misfortune presents itself to one of our loved ones, or our self, our future is being shaped and will provide us the opportunity to GROW, to become an even more loving child of God. This may sound like some person’s fantasy, a dream world, but it is not, it is reality. This infinite God, who sees everything in an instant, shapes the events of our lives so that even hardships can become the source, the beginning point, of growth. But the key is for us to accept, truly ACCEPT EVERYTHING that comes our way, as coming from a loving God.

Everything covers a lot of territory. It means the times when we get passed over for a promotion. It means the sicknesses that we experience. It means the trials of going through a difficult period. It means rejection, and failures, discouragement and abuse. Oh, everything covers just about …. every event in our life. But, it is because we know how much He does love us that we can trust and say, “Your Will be done”. These are not words that roll off of our tongue just to get us to the next part of the prayer. They are the cornerstone of the Our Father. We recognize how critical it is to joyfully accept these events, good and bad. And we can accept them, only because we already recognize how much this infinite God loves us. Through that recognition of His love for us, the significance of the hardships that come across our path permit us to meaningfully say, “Thy Will be done”. If we can understand, say, and mean them they will bond us to our God in a way we could never foresee.

So the events in our life have great significance to us. But, we have to stop looking at them to see if they are pleasurable, or beneficial, or helpful to our own goals. This view cannot be the sole mechanism to judge whether or not the event has any meaning for us, any good meaning. If instead of depositing them into “good” bins and “bad” bins, we must stop judging the events as they happen. Every event, every circumstance that occurs is directly permitted by our loving Father in heaven. Don’t look at “the what if” possibilities. Don’t judge how beneficial they are to you, right now. Graciously thank this loving God, our Creator for giving us a life, in which we can grow and become even closer to this loving source. We may not see the benefits of events immediately. We may never really know for sure why it was necessary that the events even had to happen. But we can always know that our loving God is smiling on us, all the time. His love for us is all we need to know, to care about. With His love surrounding us, protecting us, we can smile back and say to Him, “May Your Will be done, in my life. Thank you”.

The 5 Posts directly below, blend with this theme. They continue the thought. Thanks for coming:

1) Humanity of Jesus
2) What is the Will of God?
3) Are You Important?
4) Embrace Life: Embrace God
5) Whispers