Hallowing God's Name: A Call to Reverence

Devotional

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When we speak to someone, we use a name to call that person in distinction from everyone else. We indicate that we wish to speak to that particular person and to call attention to our standing in relation to the one addressed. I call my son my dear boy, my daughter little princess, my wife sweetheart. [00:52:48]

To dedicate means to set something aside, to commit it to some special use, and I can do that on a purely human level. Consecration is a little deeper. Consecration brings in the Divine. We consecrate the bread and the cup at the Lord's supper or a life that is somehow committed to God's word. [02:42:00]

We all need something larger than that to sustain our life. My life cannot be built on myself, and when I come to grief, when I come to pain, when I come to loss, when I come to anguish, when I come to what I cannot control—and I do, and you do too—I can't live on that foundation anymore. [04:48:00]

We are worth-ascribing creatures. We can't help to do that, and we need a source, a foundation of ultimate worth that is large enough that it will keep us going through the most painful times, and there is only one, and that's God. And that's what we say here: Hallowed Be Your Name. [05:36:00]

If our worth was just dependent on our abilities, then if you're not very athletic, if you're not a very high IQ person or very lovely, then your worth is diminished. He said it's a little like there's a home in Virginia called Mount Vernon, and it has incalculable worth because it once belonged to George Washington. [06:34:00]

The most profound teaching experience he ever had was not at Harvard, it was not at Yale, it was at a state prison in Michigan where he was invited to come teach because it was explained to him that a group of men were taking a class in this prison and they had been assigned for a philosophical text to read through "Lament for a Son." [07:19:00]

They would say, "We are so honored, Professor, that you have come to visit our class." Never before had a student told me that they were honored by my presence in their classroom. Sometimes when I'm introduced as a speaker, the person introducing me declares that the group's honored to have me there. [08:19:00]

They who were daily demeaned, forced to knuckle under, ordered around, were saying that my presence honored them, declared that they were not worthless scum, declared that they had honor. Worthy, worthy, Hallowed be your name. [08:49:00]

The men in the class themselves were in grief, most of them not over the death of a child but over the ruin they had wrought on their own lives and the lives of others. They were reading the book not so much as my expression of my grief but as an expression of their grief. [09:20:00]

They offered interpretations of my words that had never occurred to me. I was the student that day; they were the teachers. Hallowed be thy name, Hallowed be thy name. I felt profoundly my common humanity with these men. [10:14:00]

I felt more connected with those lifers than I have ever felt connected with 18 to 22-year-old college students at Calvin or Harvard or Yale. Hallowed be thy name. So this day, as you walk through this day, whatever your grief, get worth it. Worthy, worthy, worthy. [10:43:00]

We see his worth when we look out at the world that he made, when we look out at the people for whom Jesus died, when we look at ourselves, when we look at our lives, when we look at our problems. Here's the prayer for today: worthy, worthy, worthy. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain. [11:00:00]

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