Scripture: "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."—LUKE xi. 2.
When God created heaven and earth, He meant heaven to be the Divine pattern to which earth was to be conformed; "as in heaven, so on earth," was to be the law of its existence.
The word calls us to think of what constitutes the glory of heaven. God is all in all there. Everything lives in Him and to His glory. And as we then think of what this earth has now become, with all its sin and misery, with the great majority of the race without any knowledge of the true God, and the remainder nominally Christians, yet for the greater part utterly indifferent to His claims, and estranged from His holiness and love, we feel what a revolution, what a miracle is needed, if the word is to be fulfilled: "As in heaven, so on earth."
And how is this ever to come true? Through the prayers of God's children. Our Lord teaches us to pray for it. Intercession is to be the great link between heaven and earth. The intercession of the Son, begun upon earth, continued in heaven, and carried on by His redeemed people upon earth, will bring about the mighty change: "As in heaven, so on earth." As Christ said, "I come to do Thy will, O God," until He prayed the great prayer in Gethsemane, "Thy will be done": so His redeemed ones, who yield themselves fully to His mind and Spirit, make His prayer their own, and unceasingly send up the cry, "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."
Every prayer of a parent for a child, of a believer for the saving of the lost, or for more grace to those who have been saved, is part of the great unceasing cry going up day and night from this earth, "As in heaven, so on earth."
But it is when God's children not only learn to pray for their immediate circles and interests, but enlarge their hearts to take in the whole Church and the whole world, that their united supplication will have power with God and hasten the day when it shall indeed be, "As in heaven so on earth"—the whole earth filled with the glory of God. Child of God, will you not yield yourself, like Christ, to live with this one prayer: "Father, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven"?
Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done—as in heaven, so on earth. AMEN.
