Today’s song from Sing Praise is a harmonised chant from southern Africa of one line from the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done on earth, O Lord”.
As it’s such a short text, it invites a reflection on the meaning of these familiar words. John used it in morning prayer as a response to the intercessions, which seems fitting: we ask the Lord for what we think seems appropriate (perhaps for the healing of someone in pain, the righting of an injustice somewhere in the world, or for some perceived need in our own lives). Then we pause and say (or sing) “your will be done, O Lord”. It’s a reminder that an answer to prayer is never guaranteed to be what we were hoping for, because we cannot fully understand another person, let alone God himself.
Does that mean we shouldn’t pray for specific things? The writer C S Lewis expressed many wise things about prayer, but here’s one of them:
‘Praying for particular things,” said I, “always seems to me like advising God how to run the world. Wouldn’t it be wiser to assume that He knows best?” “On the same principle,” said he, “I suppose you never ask a man next to you to pass the salt, because God knows best whether you ought to have salt or not. And I suppose you never take an umbrella, because God knows best whether you ought to be wet or dry.” “That’s quite different,” I protested. “I don’t see why,” said he. “The odd thing is that He should let us influence the course of events at all. But since He lets us do it in one way I don’t see why He shouldn’t let us do it in the other.’ (C S Lewis, “God in the Dock”).
So do pray as you think right. But then ask that God’s will, not yours, be done. Even Jesus himself, on his last night in Gethsemane, prayed that.
I have never felt very adequate commenting about prayer. In fact, when the Bishop (a long while ago) said at the institution of one of the neighbouring clergy: “When we are appointing clergy we look for three things: a person of faith, a person of the bible, and a person of prayer”, I said to myself: “Ah well, I suppose two out of three ain’t bad?”
But I do feel this is worth saying: we believe in the power of God, not in the power of prayer. Prayer is never like a light switch which of itself opens the way to the electricity reaching the appliance. Prayer is only the request to the Person who has his hand on the switch. Amen to what Stephen has said: it is His will which we seek to be done on earth.