The Lord’s Prayer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 17, 1872

The Lord’s Prayer

I used to think the Lord’s prayer was a short prayer; but as I live long and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man in praying that prayer were to be stopped in every sentence until he thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. “Our Father”—there would be a wall a hundred feet high in just these two words, to some men. If he might say “our tyrant,” or “our monarch,” or even “our Creator,” he could get along with it, but “our Father,” why, the man is almost a saint who can pray that.

You read, “Thy will be done,” and you say to yourself, “Oh! I can pray that,” but God says, “How is it about your temper and your pride? How is it about your business and your daily life?” This is a revolutionary petition. It would make any man’s shop or store tumble to the ground to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, “Thy will be done,” crushing through it? I think it the most searching prayer to pray in the world.