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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