“Lord, we would fain some little palm branch lay
Upon thy way.
If but the foldings of thy garment’s hem
Shall shadow them,
These worlthless leaves, which we have brought and strewed
Along thy road,
Shall be raised up and made divinely sweet,
And fit to lie beneath thy feet.”
Already we have learned to keep back the thought of our own wants when we enter the gate of prayer, and to pray first for the hollowing of God’s name. We are here checked again in our expression of our own eager desires, and bidden to pray instead for the coming of God’s kingdom. The things of God must come before our things.
“Thy kingdom come.” What is the kingdom of God for whose coming we are here taught to pray? It is not the rule of God over the material universe. Already the divine sway in this realm is complete. No star ever rebels against the laws ordained for the heavenly bodies. There is nowhere in nature any resistance to the will of God, which is revealed in what we call nature’s laws. There is no need, therefore, to pray for the coming of our Fathers’s kingdom in the natural world.
Nor is this a prayer for the speedy coming of death to the child of God, that he may enter into the joys and felicities of heaven’s blessedness, — the full glory of the kingdom of God. Our Lord’s own prayer for his disciples was not that they should be taken out of the world, for they have a work to do here, but that they should remain in the world and be kept from its evil.
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