Article May 2, 1994 Issue

What do we expect when we pray?

Sarah Goetze Hyatt

Do we sometimes pray as though we expect God to intervene in human circumstances, "fixing things" to ensure an outcome we consider favorable? Do we offer God a selection of alternatives, in order of Our preference? Or are we willing to follow in all humility the example of our Master, Christ Jesus, and his instructions about prayer. In the prayer he gave us are these words: "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10).

The humility expressed in that simple declaration is not hopeless resignation. Jesus was instructing his followers to acknowledge the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, our Father, and the consequent impossibility of the existence of a power opposed to Him. In her book Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives the spiritual sense of that line from the Lord's Prayer (p. 17):

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