Over at NPR, their series of essays “This I Believe” can occassionaly yield some nuggets of gold.
And this is one of them:
This is know: I believe in the Lord’s Prayer, all of it, but particularly where it says, “Thy will be done.” For me, that’s one clear channel to God. That one belief, “Thy will be done,” carries me through each act of each day. It teaches me to live with all that is given me and to live without what is taken away. It rescues me from the idea that happiness for myself is either important or desirable. But it doesn’t at all destroy happiness as a gift I can give, miraculously, from an empty vessel.
I believe I’m held here in trust, that I have no right to violate that trust through negation, no right to turn inward or away from people or jobs I can do. What if I do start through habit and finish in a half dream? The belief suffices: “Thy will be done.”
I believe there is nothing passive yielding my will to God’s. It keeps me very busy using the brain He gave me to study fields that need plowing; using the heart He gave me to remember these fields belong to His people; using the faith He gave me to pass up self-satisfaction for doing something I want to do anyway.
Read — or better yet, hear — the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did.
H/T Andrew Sullivan
