Your Will Be Done

Dear OFS Community,

We closed the Spring term with a lovely Easter Service that reflected upon the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Mr Ford and Mr Evans recently put this prayer into a hymn format that the school has been learning, so it was a good opportunity to pause and seek meaning. As a child, I remember my school day starting and ending with this prayer and whilst it became a point of comfort, I suspect that it also became too familiar, so my invitation was for our community to find their own messages in these powerful words.

For me, the line ‘Your will be done’, offers such freedom when I am brave enough to let go; in a world where we are told that we control every aspect of our lives, when in reality this is quite the illusion, it can be a burden to believe in control.

I like the simplicity of the request, ‘Give us our daily bread’. I hate to admit it, but there are times when I run to the supermarket only to find that they’ve run out of strawberries – of course there are no strawberries, it’s winter! And yet when we turn on the news and see queues of displaced people waiting in line for food, daily bread is quite literally a godsend.

We looked at ‘forgiveness’ and the idea that Jesus loves us so unconditionally that he is willing to look beyond our darkest thoughts and acts, loving us in spite of our shortcomings – if he can do this then surely, we must seek to do the same when we feel wronged.

During the service, we took all the following words and saw them for the burden and weight they are in our lives.