Hallowed be your name (Dan Wells)

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“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1)

 We are taking some time in our daily encouragements to look at the Lord’s Prayer, and today we come to the line “hallowed be your name.”

‘Hallowed be your name’ is a strange and unusual thing to pray. It’s something we pray to God and not toward other people. That’s right, since there is something special about God’s name. That’s really what the prayer is all about. ‘Hallowed’ means to make or acknowledge something as holy. To set something apart for special use and honour.

Praying ‘hallowed be your name’ is saying to God, your name is special. Your name is different. It is powerful and important. It should be treated differently to other names.

Psalm 8 begins ‘how majestic is your name in all the earth’. God’s name is not just a label we use to speak to God. It describes his character, his nature, his person. To hallow his name means to recognise who he is. To hallow his name means to recognise that God is not like us.

God is very different from us, and that is a wonderful thing to remember. He keeps his promises when we so often break them. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, though I often want payback for wrongs done to me. God is perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly loving. God is wonderfully not like us.

Have you hallowed God’s name today? By that I mean, have you taken the time to think about who God is? Have you taken time to consider how God is different from you and me? Have you meditated about the wonderful character of God, and has that led you into worship? Why not take some time to do that now?

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Thank you that you are not like me. Thank you that you are perfectly good and loving and just. Thank you that you are set apart and holy. Hallow your name in this world and over my life today. Amen.

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