I was sitting outside in our garden this morning, at a not very warm for July cloudy 14 degC but there were breaks in the clouds when the wonderfully warm sun would shine through.
And as I was contemplating the beauty of God’s creation and how my partner Lyn had made our garden so beautiful, I got to thinking of the Lord’s prayer – especially of the last sentence called the doxology which was added early on but not part of the original biblical texts: “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen” in the traditional version. And as I said this, the sun burst through the cloud embracing me with its warmth. I love this traditional version because it sounds so powerful and, for me, puts things in the right order – First God; second His magnificence; third His eternity. To me the modern version is weak in comparison: “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen.”. The original texts are Matthew 6.9–13 and Luke 11.1–4 in the New International Version.
Both contemporary and traditional versions of the Lord’s Prayer are on the Church of England website.
Back to the garden. As with so many things, God provides the raw materials and leaves it up to us to work with them to make things of beauty to glorify Him. Lyn has done a wonderful job, with a bit of manual labour from myself, because when we bought the house a few years ago, the back garden was a sea of gravel with a couple of trees and some bamboo spreading out of control, she has now created a space with beautiful flowers and foliage and fruit and somewhere that we can dine under shelter and somewhere we can sit and relax (in the sun when it shines) for much of the day. God has truly blessed us and we need to be mindful of that and share his blessings with others.
This kind of leads on to all the other wonderful raw materials that God has provided. Metals of all kinds, from the precious metals, gold and silver, to the more mundane metals required to manufacture the things that we use every day that make life easier and more pleasant. Stone from which we can make jewellery and from which buildings and carvings can be made. Fossil fuels which powered the industrial revolution and so much more, giving us a high standard of living (and of which we now need to reduce our usage so as not to spoil it all). We need to be ever mindful of the fact that we have a duty to conserve everything for future generations and a duty not to exploit everything for profit now with consequent loss in the future.
“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen”
I love those words. I find them really powerful and expressive and I was disappointed that they were modified in the more recent versions of the Lord’s Prayer. They are still the words I day though, because that is how I feel.