Thy Will Be Done

I. The man in the dark

A man sits in the dark, and he asks to be taught.

The enemy has hounded him this far. His soul is trampled to the ground, and the psalm reaches for the heaviest image the language has: he has made me sit in dark places, like the dead of long ago.1 No temple nearby, no army behind him, no way out that he can see. Above the song stands one name: of David.2

The most striking thing about this psalm is how it begins. Not with the enemy — with a request that God refrain from something: do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before You.3

The man in the dark knows that, strictly reckoned, he has no leg to stand on. So he does not ask for his rights. He remembers what he has seen of this God — I remember the days of old, I meditate on all your deeds — and stretches out his hands like dry ground toward rain.4

Whoever sits like that knows what to ask for. For rescue — and he does ask for it, further on, in so many words.5 But in the middle of the psalm stands another request, and it does not want to get out of the dark; it wants to get through it.

"Let me hear your steadfast love in the morning, for I trust in You; make known to me the way I should go."6

And then, a little further on in the same psalm, the sentence falls:

"Teach me to do your will, for You are my God; let your good Spirit lead me in a level land."7

Whoever is lost asks the way. Whoever is hunted asks for a hiding place. This man asks for instruction. He does not treat the will of God as a verdict that comes down on him, but as a subject he has not yet mastered — and the darkness as a classroom in which the Teacher can simply be reached.

Even the first petition of the prayer stands in this psalm, one verse further on: for your name's sake, YHWH, give me life.8 The man in the dark prays the things of the prayer in the order of his need — and all the while holds on to the fact that he wants to be taught.

II. "Teach me" and "teach us"

Centuries later a disciple stands waiting until his Master has finished praying. When He stops, the disciple asks: "Lord, teach us to pray."9

In Greek — the language in which the gospel was written down — something comes together. The verb with which that disciple makes his request stands in the psalm verse of the man in the dark. And the object of the third petition of the prayer stands in that same psalm verse. Teach me — to do your will.

David asked: teach me. The disciple asks: teach us. And what David wanted to be taught is exactly what the prayer has the child ask for: your will.

One psalm verse already carries both halves — the asking to be taught, and the will as the subject matter. The prayer begins where this psalm already sat: with a child who has not yet mastered the subject and a Father who wants to teach it.

The psalm does not picture the lesson as a verdict. It does not say that the will is imposed; it shows a teacher who walks alongside — let your good Spirit lead me in a level land. Whoever teaches a child to walk does not push it forward; he goes beside it, and chooses the level ground. That is how the man in the dark asks about the will of his God: as something you are taught by Someone who stays with you.

III. What has already happened

There is one psalm that treats the third petition as old news.

"Whatever YHWH pleased, He has done — in heaven and on earth."10

Done. Perfect tense. What the child asks — thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven — Psalm 135 reports as an accomplished fact, with the same word stem and the same phrase of place. In Greek the verse and the petition almost slide into each other; the difference lies in one preposition.

That is no clash; it opens the petition up. The third petition does not doubt whether the Father gets his way — the psalm has already answered that. What it lays before Him is something else: that the earth may become what the house already is. In heaven his will is no point of contention; there it is simply called what happens. The child looks around, sees that things are different here, and lays the difference before his Father.

The phrase of place itself is rare, and where it stands in a prayer, it stands in the mouth of Moses, of David and of Solomon — men who knew what it is to be responsible for more than themselves.11

The middle one of the three is the man from the dark himself, on another day of his life: in a courtyard full of people, with everything that has been gathered for the house of his God, and he gives it back with both hands — for everything is from You, and from your hand we have given it to You.12

Of the three, Moses is the oldest. He begged for one thing — let me cross over, I pray, and see that good land — and the answer was no. Speak to Me no more about this matter.13

The man who was the first to pray to the God "in heaven and on earth" did not get his own will. He got something else: climb the mountain, and see the land. The third petition passed through him too, centuries before it received words, and it did not break him — it does not say that he grumbled; it says that he climbed.14

With Solomon, the youngest of the three, it went the other way: his prayer with this phrase of place was spoken at the dedication of the house, and it was answered while the people stood by.15

No to Moses, yes to Solomon, and between the two a David who gave everything back — the will of this God does not let itself be caught in one pattern. What the three prayers share is not the outcome; it is the address. And the man in the middle knew that address from two sides: with full hands in the courtyard, with empty hands in the dark.

IV. "Be it done for you"

Matthew preserves the third petition — and he preserves something more, scattered through his gospel, and it changes how the petition sounds.

A centurion from Capernaum comes on behalf of his paralyzed servant and considers himself unworthy to receive the Master under his roof: only speak a word. He explains himself why that is enough — he is a man of authority, he says to one go and he goes — and he recognizes in the Master Someone whose word cannot fall by the wayside.16

At that recognition Jesus marvels aloud, and the answer ends with: "as you have believed, so let it be done for you." Two blind men follow Him, crying out, right into the house; He touches their eyes: "according to your faith let it be done for you."17

And then the third, and it is the sharpest. A woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon — an outsider, not a child of the house — cries out for her daughter. First she gets silence, then a refusal that talks of dogs and the children's bread, and she stands her ground and answers from the floor: even the dogs eat the crumbs. Then the conversation turns, and He says:

"O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you will."18

There stands the verb of the third petition — and the word for will as well, but the will is hers. The word with which the child prays "thy will be done" is the word with which He says to three people: be it done for you. And to the woman in full: be it done for you as you will.

That sets the third petition in a different light. It is not a capitulation to an overwhelming power that will push through anyway. It is one side of a conversation — and in the same gospel one can see that the other side of that conversation can say something like this back.

A Father who lets a Canaanite mother prevail on Him until He grants her her own will is not a wall that petitions bounce off. He is Someone who listens, and who sometimes speaks the listening aloud. If the will of God is a subject to be learned, as the man in the dark asked, then this belongs to the subject matter: the other side of the conversation can say "be it done for you".

A Roman officer, two blind men by the road, a mother from pagan territory — all three times a reason is given, and each time it is the same: as you have believed · according to your faith · great is your faith. The "be it done for you" of this Master does not land on rank or descent; it lands on faith, wherever it stands. With the mother, what it achieved is added: from that hour her daughter was well.19

V. The night He prayed it

Once someone prays the third petition word for word, and it is night, and it is He Himself.

"My Father, if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it — thy will be done."20

Twice his praying that night is preserved word for word, and two things return both times: the sentence opens with my Father, and the third petition stands at the end. What stands between the two is the heaviest thing a human being can say — and it is said to a Father, not to fate.

Between the first time and the second, moreover, something has shifted. The first time: if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. The second time: if it cannot pass unless I drink it — thy will be done. It is the same night, the same knees, the same cup; only the sentence has moved, from possibility to will. That is how the third petition sounds when it is being learned — not all at once, but in two prayers with a silence between them.

There is a third time as well, and Matthew reports only how it sounded: He prayed again, saying the same word.21 That is how a lesson sounds once it has been learned: it is recited. What the man in the dark asked — teach me to do your will — is demonstrated in this garden, in another dark.

The only human being who ever prayed this petition with everything at stake called Him "my Father" first.22 The order of Gethsemane is the order of the prayer — first the address, then the will. After that He stands up and wakes the sleepers: rise, let us go — he who hands Me over is near.

VI. Servant and child

Psalm 143 ends in a signature, and it is honest: for I am your servant.23

Servant. It is not just a closing word: David calls himself that twice in this psalm — at the front, where he asks God not to enter into judgment, and at the very end.24 The psalm is framed in that one word. Within that frame stands everything he has asked — the lesson, the will as subject matter, the Spirit who walks alongside — but the frame itself remains: a servant speaks with his Lord.

The prayer puts a different frame around the same petition: Father. David prayed the content of the third petition centuries ahead, in the dark, superbly — and he prayed it as a servant. That the child may pray it as a child, it owes neither to David nor to itself; it is the first word of the prayer that has changed everything.

The psalm itself does not bring the man out of the dark. It does not say that morning came; it says that he asked for the morning, and for the lesson. There he sits, to the last line: a servant in the dark, asking his Lord for instruction.