But I just want to offer a thought that I had last night. I know that, when I say "thy will be done", I usually kind of keep right on going. But I should probably be a lot more mindful of what that really means. No Muslim, promising to be a slave of Allah, ever made a more sweeping commitment than this. In four words, we acknowledge that God's choices for our life have priority over our choices, our preferences, our everything. Like Muslims, we are slaves to God (see Romans 6.16-18), although I think we're a good bit less aware of it. It's not something we talk about it much. That's the deal we signed up for, that's the circumstances under which all the blessings and benefits of the kingdom come to us, that we surrender our will, our understanding, and our selves to God, to do with as he sees fit.
The flip side of this is that God has promised us that he will look out for us, and those are promises we can trust even when it's hard to see how he is doing so. Picking a verse almost at random, for there are many to choose from:
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28 NRSV)
Yes, things may look bleak at any point in time. However, we have an assurance that however bleak things may appear, it is God's will that we prosper. We have an assurance that God is working for our benefit in all things.
So it looks kind of bleak sometimes. To be honest, my life looks pretty bleak at the moment. One thing that happens is that God's definition of "good" and ours are not the same. I think of the prophet Hosea, whom God had marry a prostitute as a prophetic sign, or Jeremiah who tradition tells us was stoned by the very people he sought to save, or the apostle Paul. God looks at "good" from an eternal perspective, and a much longer time-line than we do, and I suppose he must look at our present misery primarily as the stuff of which eternal glory is made. Paul says as much (Romans 8.18).
Of course, like all theodicies, this fails to comfort. I don't want eternal glory, I want a break. But the notion that God promised an easy life, free of trouble, is such a radical distortion of the Christian message that I almost have to call it heresy. That's not what we're promised, not even close. We're promised that we will have rest and reward in eternity, and times of struggle, pain, and tribulation in this world. And we just torment ourselves by expecting different.
Tough but true, I think.
