November 29, 2007

“Thy Kingdom Come!”

Category: Prayer,Theology - Pastoral :: Permalink

On the threshold of Advent, it’s good to remember that Christ came so that God’s kingdom would come on earth.  But He did not merely come to establish God’s kingdom on earth.  He came so that we would long and work and pray for God’s kingdom to come more and more on earth, for God’s will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

Paul Buckley provides a helpful meditation on our prayer “Thy Kingdom Come.”  Here’s a paragraph to whet your appetite:

“Thy kingdom come … on earth as in heaven.” That’s a plea. But I doubt many of us experience it as much more than pretty words until we get some heartfelt sense of the present disjointedness between heaven and earth. We’ve got to feel in our gut, as Hamlet did after that horripilating midnight interview with the ghost, that “the time is out of joint.” We’ve got to feel the pinch. I suspect that my brothers and sisters in Asia and elsewhere feel it more keenly than most of us in the West do. The ones I met gather every morning at 5:30 to pray. I take it their circumstances have taught them something about the importance of prayer, perhaps especially a prayer such as “Thy kingdom come.”

Posted by John Barach @ 10:10 pm | Discuss (0)

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