This is a translation of a scriptural mediatation from the Russian book, “Day by Day”/ Lewis connection follows:
Scripture: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Luke 11, 2)
Meditation:
"What can be more wonderful for a person on earth than to do the will of God, not only sometimes, superficially and often reluctantly, but the way it is performed in heaven.
"The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer refer directly to the Father: Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will. Christ teaches man to place God in that primary place that belongs to Him. First the heavenly, then the earthly, first the spiritual, then the physical, first the Divine, then the human. Christ takes our gaze, chained to our surroundings, and directs it to the Father and to what pertains to Him.
"With us it is different: what is ours takes precedent. Our concerns, needs and undertakings absorb everything, and we come with them to God as the only recourse in a difficult situation. And He, Himself, perhaps has no place in our lives. From this comes the incorrectness, sinfulness and aimlessness of existence. Christ acknowledges only one order of things, and proclaims it in this wonderful prayer: “in the beginning God”.
"When a person also recognizes this order in his soul, only then a truly Christian life begins. Seeking first of all God’s will, and carrying it out to the extent of the light he is given, one enters the realm of God’s Kingdom and begins to know and glorify the Name of the One, from Whom comes all grace and the fulfillment of every need. Then equilibrium comes to the soul, and God’s will is accepted not only with sad submission, but is carried out with the full energy and trust of dedicated love.
“In a school, the children were asked, “How is God’s will done in heaven?”. There came many replies: “eagerly”, “now”, “joyfully”, etc. The last small voice belonged to a very little girl who reverently said, “Without asking why!” Yes, with a trust which does not question, but fulfills, they carry out God’s will who consciously make this third petition and conform their lives to it.”
And this is what Lewis writes about that phrase from the Our Father in “Letters to Malcolm”:
"Thy will be done. My festoons on this have been added gradually. At first I took it exclusively as an act of submission, attempting to do with it what Our Lord did in Gethsemane. I thought of God’s will purely as something that would come upon me, something of which I should be the patient. And I also thought of it as a will which would be embodied in pains and disappointments. Not, to be sure, that I suppose God’s will for me to consist entirely of disagreeables. But I thought it was only the disagreeables that called for this preliminary submission–the agreeables could look after themselves for the present. When they turned up, one could give thanks.
"This interpretation is, I expect, the commonest. And so it must be. And such are the miseries of human life that it must often fill our whole mind. But at other times other meanings can be added. So I added one more.
"The peg for it is, I admit, much more obvious in the English version than in the Greek or Latin. No matter: this is where the liberty of festooning comes in. “Thy will be done”. But a great deal of it is to be done by God’s creatures; including me. The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God’s will but also that I may vigorously do it. I must be an agent as well as a patient. I am asking that I may be enabled to do it. In the long run I am asking to be given “the same mind which was also in Christ”.
“Taken this way, I find the words have a more regular daily application. For there isn’t always–or we don’t always have reason to suspect that there is–some great affliction looming in the near future, but there are always duties to be done; usually, for me, neglected duties to be caught up with. “Thy will be done–by me–now” brings one back to brass tacks.”
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)