Lords Prayer Reflection 
Your Kingdom Come    

This is part of a Lord's Prayer reflection series and
includes questions, reflections and poems.
Pick one question to think about. 

Your Kingdom Come, on earth as it is in heaven
 
Questions

What would life on earth look like if everyone acknowledged God as King over all?

In what ways might your life need to change in order to serve the kingdom of God?

Life in the kingdom is one of personal and corporate responsibility; it is spiritual, and is highly  practical. It focuses on who you are and how you live. God’s kingdom is something we long and pray for and work for as Christian disciples. How can I live as a faithful member of God’s kingdom?

God is a “lover of justice” who has “established equity” (Psalm 99). The Christian life is one of worship and service. How do we “love justice” and work for this? (Micah).

Jesus told many parables about the qualities of God’s kingdom. In Matthew 13.33 he talked about it being like yeast. How the values of God’s kingdom should permeate the whole of life. We are to live as credible disciples. What does that mean?

Reflections

When we pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we are not praying that God may accomplish what he wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills.
Cyprian of Carthage (C200-258)

The will of God presents itself to us at each instant like an immense ocean which the desire of our hearts can never empty, but we can receive something of that ocean as our hearts expand by faith, trust and love.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675 – 1751)

A Christian Society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it, and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat “Do as you would be done by”…but I cannot really carry it out until I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself until I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

In this world of death, in this empire of ruins and shell torn fields we pray “thy kingdom come!” we pray it more fervently than ever…the kingdom of God appears precisely at the place where there is blindness, lameness, leprosy and death. it does not shun any of these because it is too good….it is the light that is ineluctably drawn to the benighted places of the earth where people sit in darkness.” Helmut Thielicke “The Prayer that Spans the World” a sermon series delivered in the runs of Stuttgart in World War II.

Do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly before your God. Micah 6:8

By far the greatest thing a man [or woman] can do for his city is to be a good man. Simply to live there as a good man, as a Christian man of action and practical citizen……It is goodness that tells, goodness first and goodness last.
 
Bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken hearted, proclaiming liberty to captives, release to prisoners, comfort to those who mourn. Isaiah 6:1

Prayers and Poems

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
— Teresa of Ávila (attributed)

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen
attributed to St Francis