[AI translation] This excerpt lifts us to a spiritual height of prayer from the Lord, from which the praying person can look in two directions: backwards to the past and forwards to the future. Last night we looked back on the past year and said, "Thy will be done", so that we might close the year of the Lord 1968 with a heart of peace and thanksgiving, and now we look forward to the new year that is about to begin and say, "Thy will be done", so that we might start the year of the Lord 1969 with a spirit of peace and joy.According to classical theology, there are two sides to God's will: His hidden will and His revealed will. So much of God's will is hidden from us. We don't know its content, but it's not important. The secrets are the Lord's (Deuteronomy 29:29), says the Word. What God wants for you and me and the whole world in the coming year is a secret. He knows what is not! Who among us who are here now will make it to the end of this year, who will live to see the end of the coming weeks and months, none of us knows, only He. One thing is certain: He has a purpose for you, for me, for everyone. So it is not a mysterious, unpredictable destiny that determines our fate, but a very loving divine destiny, albeit mysterious and unpredictable. And that makes a big difference! Because behind the destiny there is a blind contingency, and behind the fate there is a fatherly heart beating! So, with this prayer, "Thy will be done", we place our fate in the hands of our loving heavenly Father with a childlike trust. But then let us really place it! I stress this because I know from experience that it is not easy to do this sincerely in the practice of daily life. Because we ourselves have ideas, desires, plans for the future, which may not fit into the plan and the destiny that God wants for us. Just look at your own prayers: many times, not even caring about what God might want, we just say our own, we want to influence God, to set Him in line with our own ideas and desires. Many of our cries that come before God's throne are like the demands of an unruly, fussy child who does not want to conform to his parents' will, but is determined to have his own way. We may say, "Thy will be done", but in reality we feel, "Lord, do what I want! Or: Help me to do what I have planned!
I once read in a Dutch novel that someone, a man of faith, was sitting at the bedside of a dear patient with great compassion and had this thought: 'I could only be God for 5 minutes! I know that He wants good for me, but I would somehow do better to bring that good to pass." It expresses the secret dissatisfaction of many, many people with divine providence. It goes something like this: if we were in God's place, we would immediately heal the young girl who has been lying paralysed in bed for years. Then we would say: if someone has to die today, let it be the old man who has been sitting helplessly in a chair with himself for a long time, for whom death would be a real salvation! If we were God, we would finally give the child to the couple who have been begging for it for so long! We would blow away, like dust, the mountain of misunderstanding that has risen between so many husbands and wives. We would not wait so long for those many, many praying people, but would somehow grant their requests sooner. Yes, if we were in God's place... And do you know how lucky we are that God doesn't say: well! So come here, take over from Me for a while! You know what would happen then? If we could be God for five minutes, we'd tear out the clean wheat with the concolio. If we were God for only five minutes, if we listened to every plea and every prayer, no more prayers would ever rise from the earth. If we could be God for five minutes, we would be forever sick of people. Wow, what a confused world this would be! Maybe even the stars would veer out of their orbits and collide! More than people!
But let's go on: if we could be God for five minutes, could we give up our own only begotten child to redeem the world?! Yes: as soon as this thought of dissatisfaction with divine providence occurs to someone, "if I were God", let him stand by the cross of Jesus, on the edge of the abyss of damnation, and there repeat once more: if I were God for five minutes... I am sure you would never think that again! Let us leave God in his place, let him be God! Let His will be done, and not mine! Not ours! For He sees the connections, He is the all-knowing, He is the only wise and loving power! He knows what He has ordained for us, what He has decreed for us... Yes, yes Lord, just "Thy will be done"! That is surely good! And for him who says this prayer in true believing trust, this hidden will and decree of God concerning his destiny is not a leash, nor a threat, nor a resignation, but a sure protection. Let us believe that He sees farther, His arm is mightier, His heart more loving, His help more sure, He knows what we need better than we do! So let us trust Him with all our tomorrows, and let us say calmly every day again, "Thy will be done."
But so far we have only spoken of the hidden side of God's will. I said at the beginning that there is another side of God's will: His revealed will. If His hidden will includes His decrees by which He determines our destiny, His revealed will includes His commands by which He directs our actions. By asking, therefore, "Thy will be done", the believer not only acquiesces in what God wills, but also, as it were, actively wants to participate in the formation of the form of life that God wills. To submit to his decrees, to obey his commands! And here we are asking precisely to be able to obey, to live our daily life according to His commandments, according to His will! So Jesus is teaching us not only to acknowledge God's will in this prayer, but also to do it. And this is perhaps even harder than what we have been talking about so far! Because we also have a will. And this will is a very self-conscious function of our self. We have a strange nature of self. When we find ourselves confronted with another will - that is, when God commands you to do something, you must not do this, you must renounce this, or you must suffer this - it turns out that our will is capable of disobeying, or even more: unable to obey, so that whether out of defiance, cowardice, or powerlessness, it simply resists the will of God. It is not self-evident that we also want to do what God commands! On the contrary! But that is precisely why we must pray for it.
Obedience: perhaps this one word could sum up the whole Christian life in practical terms. For Jesus did not proclaim a new morality, but a new way of life: the possibility of obedience to God's will. The Christian life does not consist in thinking up all sorts of good and beautiful things and asking God's blessing to do them: To understand the teachings of Jesus only in moral terms is the greatest mistake. The ambition of Jesus is not to make man good, or even better, but to bring us from a state of independence from God to a state of dependence on God; a state in which God's will is done. The redeemed life is a life of obedience to God's will. So it is not enough to want to do what is good in my own mind, but to want to do the will of God as I know it. And to do this I need not only a guide to tell me what to do and what not to do, but a companion to come with me on the journey, to take my hand, to lead me - that is, to Jesus the Saviour! A Saviour who will give me the willingness and the ability to do always, in every situation on earth, what God commands me to do, what God expects of me at that time, in that situation. So then, "Thy will be done."
Of course, this does not come without a struggle. But even Jesus had to struggle in the garden of Gethsemane to come to the point of total obedience to say what he taught us. Remember? What a bloody struggle it was to submit his human feelings completely to the will of God! He almost immersed himself in the will of God. "Thy will be done" - it means to want to do the will of God. Not because I have to, but because I know it is good! I want to act in accordance with God's will. Here one is sacrificing one's own will on the altar of God's will. And the wonderful thing is that when he does that, he becomes truly free! For God does not break the human will given to Him, but sets it free. In this, too, it is true what Jesus said, "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it!"
"Thy will be done": with this request we are aligned with the eternal divine will, as when a violin and a piano are aligned. With this request, we open the door to the innermost depths of our souls to Jesus, so that the forces of His Spirit may flow in and fill us to the brim.
So what is the programme behind this request? To begin this new year and each day of it with the determination to seek and to follow God's will. To continue to live our family life under the rule of God. To go to work, to go about our daily business, to speak to people in a way that always asks what God wants me to do.
Do you know what would happen if we really put this into practice?! The earth would be filled with a heavenly atmosphere around us. For behold, Jesus says: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." In heaven, there is perfect obedience to God, perfect unity with the Father! Where one lives a life of obedience to God: there is a piece of heaven on earth. Thus, even our life on earth can be brought into the circle of peace and happiness of the heavenly world.
So let us go forth boldly into the unknown paths of the year ahead with this request in our hearts:
Thy will be done;
What is good and right, Thou knowest;
Therefore our will
Thou wilt have us at thy pleasure,
That what you love, we may love,
What you hate: hate.
Let us give thee leave in all things,
On earth as it is in heaven:
Though thou deal harshly with us,
Let us suffer it in peace;
Thine is our body and soul,
Our Creator, you are free with us.
(Canticle 483, verses 6-7)
Amen.
Date: 1 January 1969 To be published
Lesson
Zsolt 139