Mean what you pray

I often wonder how many of us mean what we say when we recite the Lord's Prayer and say, "Thy will be done!"

Do we really mean it? Or do we mean, "Thy will be done as long as it is what I want"?

Let me explain.

I will not name Helen Lowry in order to protect her identity. She has a singing voice which sounds like a pregnant hyena giving birth on a bed of nails. But this has not stopped her from joining the church choir and leading it solo on many occasions.

In my view, it is plain to see that it is not God's will that she should scream and screech every Sunday to the detriment of the congregation's ear drums, and the total discomfort of our Lord in Heaven and His host of angels and saints.

Yet this has not deterred Helen one iota. She continues to sing solo from the Psalms every Sunday before we read from the Gospel.

She is not accompanied by either the organ or any musical instrument. She squawks through the psalms for a good ten minutes. I never cease to wonder how she knows what tune to sing to. Was there a musical score discovered in old parchments at the time they found the psalms?

When she sings you can hear the birds outside leaving the trees and fleeing to a safe distance miles away. The leaves on the trees dry out and curl as they fall one by one to the ground accompanied by all kinds of flying insects as they crash in their final death throes.

I sit there in church clenching my teeth wondering whether this is what it will be like at the end of times when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come to end it all and take us to another life ... except of course for Helen Lowry who will be spared and will continue to shriek into eternity.

Let Helen be a lesson to you. Before you do something in life, ask: Is it really God's will that I do this?