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Winter 2001
Epiphanies
Share your own
Epiphany,
click here!
Addressing attendees of
"Crisis in the Church" last September, Bishop
Raphael J. Adams said, "We can only find ourselves
together with others, and we can only find others
if we search for them in God.." In that spirit, we
are pleased to introduce "Epiphanies" as a regular
addition to NP. In this space, we invite readers to
share manifestations they've received along their
faith journeys with the Lord. They may have been
unprecipitated flashes of insight, or
understandings that resulted from a brief event or
long experience. All are gifts of grace. If you
think that YOUR epiphany will help others to find
themselves in God, please send it to us in 500
words or less to EPHIPHANIES, P.O. BOX 58273,
LOUISVILLE, KY 40258. You also can e-mail us at
info@orccna.org
or submit your
Ephipany on-line by
clicking here! If we
use it, we'll send you a complimentary copy of the
next issue of NP or add an issue to your
subscription.
Thy Will Be
Done, Please
Valerie
Kane
Four words in The Lord's
Prayer always prompted me to say them with my
fingers figuratively, if not literally, crossed
behind my back. Indeed, I'd be willing to wager
that many Christians pray them, not with joyous
expectation, but with sullen resignation. A sort of
"Well, if that's the way it has to be" attitude.
What is it about the petition, "Thy will be done"
that impels so many of us to softly add, "Just not
any time soon, please"?
In my case, I was just a
child of four the first time I heard the words
"God's will", and they had been used to explain to
me why my eight-month-old cousin, a beautiful baby
girl with enormous blue eyes, had just died of a
sudden illness. God's will? I wondered. That an
innocent child should die and parents grieve? What
kind of God had willed such a thing? Thereafter,
whenever adults referred to some tragedy or
calamity as "the will of God", they reinforced my
growing conviction that God was indeed capricious,
if not cruel-certainly strange for a God who was
also supposed to love me and to whom I was taught
to pray for my needs. I suspect that many
Christians, when they were children, had
experiences similar to mine and came to the same
conclusion: Why on earth would anyone ask for God
to work His will in our lives? It could only mean
pain and loss.
Now that I've lived more than
half my life, I realize that suffering is not God's
will for me or for any of His children. What is His
will is that all things work for my ultimate good
and bring me ever closer to Him. That they one day
re-unite me with Him. Sometimes, though, because of
my fallen nature, my good can only be achieved
through some measure of suffering. That's why
experiences that I prayed to be spared of
ultimately led me to better places that only God
could have foreseen.
Of course, this is often
small comfort to me or to anyone who's truly
struggling with pain, injustice, loss, illness, or
that great spoiler-anxiety. But it recently came to
me that in The Lord's Prayer, we not only ask that
God's will be done but that it be done "on Earth as
it is in Heaven." The question then follows, What
could possibly occur in Heaven, the seat of God's
abiding love, that we Christians would not all
deeply desire, that would not make us eternally
happy? That's right, nothing. So when we pray "Thy
will be done", in our hearts we ought to be
shouting, "Yes, Lord! Please. Each and every
day." --
Valerie
Kane
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