Luke 11:2 And he said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done… — "Begin and say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come" — stop! if you say the next sentence, it is all gone — you are His "Thy will be done." What? In you? In your reason? In your taste? In your affections? In God's providential counsels for you in the affairs of your family? Stand then, mother, over your little child that lies sick in the cradle, and say, if you can, "Our Father which art in heaven" — then God is your Father, and He loves your child better than you do — "Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come" — now do you dare look down into the face of your little child and say, "Thy will be done," if it is the will of God to take the child? Look upon your estate, that seems trembling, and about to totter and fall. Look upon your property that seems to take to itself wings and fly away. In my boyish days, in just such weather as this, in old Bethlehem, Connecticut, where I studied Latin by hunting pigeons, I have stood and seen among the young and tender leaves, thousands, myriads of pigeons. The trees seemed laden with them. And I see in the city here, rich men, all of whose branches are loaded down with money. At the report of a gun, or the flight of a stone, or a little shout, the pigeons, with a rip and a roar, all rose, and the air was clamorous, as they flew every whither; and in a minute the wood was still, with the exception, perhaps, of the bark of a squirrel. They had taken to themselves wings and flown away. And so the man that yesterday was branch-ful, to-day is branch-less. Everything is stripped from him, and gone. And can you stand in your barrenness and say, "Thy will be done"? Between two there has come the shadow and the darkness, and both hearts sorrow, and both yearn. Can you both say, in the sight of final, everlasting separation-in this world, everlasting — "Thy will be done"? Can you stand in the house of your pride, and say, "Thy will be done"? Is your God such a one that, for the sake of the sweetness in Him, for the sake of the beauty in Him, for the sake of the joy that you have in Him, for the sake of His glorious excellence, you can say of your pride, "God's will be done therein"? Can you say is of your vanity? Can you hush every passion to sleep with the name of God? (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. |
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