The prayers in this last part ask least for the one praying. Moses and Israel sing on the far side of the sea, “The Lord is my strength and my song.” Hannah, who once wept at Shiloh, now prays, “My heart rejoices in the Lord.” David blesses God before the whole assembly: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory.” When Jesus comes the songs start again. Mary says, “Holy is His name,” Zechariah, “He has visited and redeemed His people,” and Simeon, holding the child, asks only to be dismissed in peace, “For my eyes have seen Your salvation.” Jesus prays the same way. He praises the Father for hiding these things from the wise and revealing them to little children. At Lazarus’s tomb he gives thanks before the dead man comes out. On his last night he asks to be glorified so that he may glorify the Father, and says, “I have made Your name known to them.” His hardest prayers are surrender. “Now My soul is troubled,” he says, yet he will not ask to be saved from the hour, only “Father, glorify Your name!” In Gethsemane he asks for the cup to pass, then prays again, “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, may Your will be done.” On the cross he prays for those who crucify him, cries out the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm that does not end where it begins, and dies with a line from Psalm 31: “Into Your hands I commit my spirit.” Stephen, stoned for following him, prays the same two prayers, now to Jesus: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The Bible’s prayers end in song. The martyrs still ask, “How long, O Lord?” But around the throne they sing to the Lamb, “Worthy are You,” and those who conquered stand beside a sea of glass and sing the song of Moses again, now with the Lamb: “Who will not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?”
The prayers in this last part ask least for the one praying. Moses and Israel sing on the far side of the sea, “The Lord is my strength and my song.” Hannah, who once wept at Shiloh, now prays, “My heart rejoices in the Lord.” David blesses God before the whole assembly: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory.” When Jesus comes the songs start again. Mary says, “Holy is His name,” Zechariah, “He has visited and redeemed His people,” and Simeon, holding the child, asks only to be dismissed in peace, “For my eyes have seen Your salvation.” Jesus prays the same way. He praises the Father for hiding these things from the wise and revealing them to little children. At Lazarus’s tomb he gives thanks before the dead man comes out. On his last night he asks to be glorified so that he may glorify the Father, and says, “I have made Your name known to them.” His hardest prayers are surrender. “Now My soul is troubled,” he says, yet he will not ask to be saved from the hour, only “Father, glorify Your name!” In Gethsemane he asks for the cup to pass, then prays again, “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, may Your will be done.” On the cross he prays for those who crucify him, cries out the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm that does not end where it begins, and dies with a line from Psalm 31: “Into Your hands I commit my spirit.” Stephen, stoned for following him, prays the same two prayers, now to Jesus: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The Bible’s prayers end in song. The martyrs still ask, “How long, O Lord?” But around the throne they sing to the Lamb, “Worthy are You,” and those who conquered stand beside a sea of glass and sing the song of Moses again, now with the Lamb: “Who will not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?”