Your Kingdom Come!

Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)

We pray these words all the time. The Our Father is a familiar prayer, but what do these words unlock?

When we pray for God's Kingdom to come, what does that even mean?

We acknowledge our God as King

We are putting Him in the first place. It would be easy to think that God is merely a far-off, distant figure. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, but also a Deist, said that God "expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." As Christians, and as Catholics, we acknowledge that God did want to be involved in the world and that He in fact is very much active in the world. This puts us in a specific category. We believe that God, the infinite, all-powerful being, rules over the world.

We acknowledge his superiority over our lives

We give Him sovereignty over our life. It is already true that God has everything in His hands, so it could almost seem fake or forced that we give Him superiority over our lives. Nevertheless, there is something worthwhile here. God is trying constantly to communicate to us His love. We recognize this through dependence on Him and obedience to His will. So, when we pray the Our Father, we are proclaiming His superiority over our lives.

We believe that God is good

Why do we trust God? Because He is completely good. He is trustworthy because He is good. Other persons that we try to trust may betray us, but God is always good, all the time.