Article January 11, 1930 Issue

"Thy will"

MARY HILL SANKEY

In the prayer which we know as the Lord's Prayer, because Christ Jesus gave it to his disciples as an example of what true communion with the Father should embrace, and which, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 16), "covers all human needs"—in the Lord's Prayer is found the often repeated and much misunderstood phrase, "Thy will be done." To many persons this expression may suggest the idea of hardship and suffering at the hands of an austere power, instead of the loving care of "our Father which art in heaven." Have not many of us been educated to believe that we must learn to say submissively and blindly, "Thy will be done," believing suffering and even death to be the means by which God in His unsearchable wisdom would accomplish in us some good purpose, the significance of which we with our limited understanding are unable to grasp? But we have believed it our duty to bow to His will unquestioningly, meekly accepting the visitation and patiently enduring the trial.

How grateful is the student of Christian Science for the new light which Christian Science throws upon this portion of the Lord's Prayer! Led on by his study, he begins to ask, What is "Thy will" that is to "be done in earth, as it is in heaven," and of what does the divine will consist? How is it to be realized?

In the record of creation as set forth in the first chapter of Genesis we read, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." If God created everything good, then surely His interest in His own handiwork would demand an uninterrupted continuance of that good. Is it not illogical, then, to believe that God would temporarily set aside this good and undo His own work by imposing suffering or evil in any form on any part of His creation, in order to achieve some possible future good? Can we logically accept a belief that God's will means that He expects us to submit to suffering which He sees fit to impose? Through Christian Science we learn the error of this belief and begin to understand that God's will is eternally good, the ever operative law of harmony for all His creation.

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