C 05 - Thy Will be Done

5. Thy Will be Done

Now we return to the present which, like the past, is also the realm of God’s will, the realm in which the plan is being carried out whereby he purposes to vindicate and glorify himself as Creator and Lord, and at the same time to vindicate and glorify his creature; that creature who, in comparison with him, is so small, so weak and in such peril, so prone to failure because he is stained with sin, lost, reduced to nothingness. But it is God’s will to preserve and save his creature and to complete his work by the manifestation f his Kingdom. May thy will . . . May the plan be carried out, may it be effective now, between the beginning and the end; may the time in which we live not pass by in vain. But this consummation cannot be achieved by us; we cannot carry out this will of God; his is the plan and its execution, his the time, both present and to come and all that time holds within it. Thus we are confronted for the third time with something to be prayed for : that God will deign to concern himself with us and with this world; that he will not cease to be patient, that he will reign even to the end. But, while we pray thus, we must recognize that it is being done, that God is engaged in carrying out his will and making it effective. We are praying to our Father in communion with Jesus Christ and therefore we know that his will is already done. As in heaven . . . I hope I am not misinterpreting these words. Thy will, Eternal God, is already done as thou hast intended it; it has been done, it will be done and it will work itself out in the course of time! Before we speak, this will has been done where God is, in the mystery of what has taken place and is taking place in his presence. It was done in the creation, in his ordering of the world from the beginning; in the history of his covenant, which gives the true meaning of everything that has happened; that covenant as the prophets and apostles understood it, and the evidence of which is given us in Jesus Christ. Thy will as it is known to thee, as it is seen by thine angels, as it exists ’at thy right hand’, as we believe it to be although we do not see it, is done and is being done unceasingly in heaven.

It is done as it ought to be done, with full understanding, without hindrance or frustration, in full liberty and so that grace reigns supreme and the creature responds in thankful recognition. Thus it is done in Jesus Christ; in heaven it is perfectly fulfilled. And this we believe and know by the word of Jesus Christ, whose spirit instructs us and assures us of it. His will has been done and is being done for ever.

There is, therefore, all the more reason to pray that it may be done on earth as it is in heaven; that it may be effective in our world and in our lives, so far as we can know it, veiled as it is; that the doing of his will on earth may follow the pattern of its execution in heaven. This means : may the light and shade, the mingling of secular and religious history, of saintliness and stupidity, of wisdom and vulgarity so characteristic of our existence, may all this confusion be cleared away ! In heaven his will is perfectly done; then why not among us? May this mingling of light and darkness not endure for ever; may we cease to misunderstand and oppose thy purposes; may we cease to contradict and constantly to misrepresent the Gospel so as to make it into a new law; may we give up behaving like bad servants; may we profit by thy patience and be converted instead of toying with a humanistic Christianity and a Christian humanism and continually provoking thy wrath afresh. In the execution of thy plan, deliver us from the endless imperfection of our obedience; come and set us free and extricate us at last from the contradictions by which we are beset, although we know that thy will is done and how it is done in heaven.

Once again, God’s cause is at stake; and we are committed to his cause as he is to ours. His cause cannot be alien to us. We live in the present, within time; but time is very short, life goes by so quickly; there is not a moment to lose and we lose so many ! What can be expected of the world if we Christians are so heedlessly earthly, so well satisfied with our imperfections, so much at ease when it should not be possible to be at ease. God reigns, and we pray that he will cause us to reign with him, no less.