During my prayer and devotion time on Dec 20th, 2024, a short rhyme came to mind as a tool to help me focus my mindset for the day:
May we love Your holy name
More than life and more than pain.
May my love for You extend
To my neighbor to the end.
May my life thus shout Your praise,
This day through the end of days.
But then throughout the rest of the day I kept intermittently adding to it to make it into a hymn that paralleled the Lord’s Prayer (the initial verse, plus added refrain, being paired with the first three petitions). Friends encouraged me to take the result to an upcoming hymn-writing workshop being held on Feb 8th, 2025, and using feedback there I polished it further to make it more for congregational singing rather than as a personal devotional pneumonic (mainly expanding the initially-written verse into three separate verses for each petition and cleaning some of the language to be appropriate for corporate singing).
So this is what I ended up with:
Father, You have made this day,
And this flesh to walk Your Way.
With what strength You grant to me,
May I serve you thankfully.
Hail, Creator from of old!
Hail, the Lamb, who makes us bold!
Though You reign from heav’n above,
Here You listen in Your love.
May Your name be set apart
In the world and in my heart,
Shining from Your throne above
Through our words with deeds of love.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Joy or pain, may we proclaim:
Yours the blessing, Yours the fame.
May we fear our Lord aright,
Serve with trembling and delight.
Breathe among us as we sing
Faith and fealty to our King:
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Come, descend to us again.
Manifest Your endless reign!
May I taste Your reign for good,
Though I therefore sweat my blood.
Break the pow’rs of earth and air;
Thwart them in their own despair.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Strengthen and preserve us, Lord,
Steadfast in Your faith and Word.
May Your words here fill my soul,
Your commandments be my goal.
May Your charity defeat
My excess of wealth or wheat.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Send us, thus, each day we rise,
Bread of life for paradise.
May Your loving pardon be
Cause for my humility.
May I set my neighbors free,
Though this day they injure me.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Judge me thus, not by my debts
But Your love and righteousness.
May no test of fun or fame
Pull me back to sin or stain.
May my words and deeds this day
Cause no child to fall away.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Lead us thus by paths You know,
Where no tempting thought may grow.
May Your grace deliver me
From our foe’s calamity.
Let the cup of suff’ring pass.
Raise us with your Christ at last.
Hail, O kingdom of Your Son!
Come, O Lord! Your will be done!
Thus deliver us from all
Evil fruits of Adam’s fall.
May it be, for all is Thine;
None can thwart what You design.
May Your enemies become
But a footstool for Your throne.
Praise the Father, Spirit, Son!
Holy, holy, holy One!
With this life I bend my knee,
Now and through eternity.
It can be put to the tune HUMILITY (“See, Amid the Winter Snow”.)
The prayer obviously mirrors the Lord’s Prayer, particularly taking inspiration from Luther’s Small Catechism’s explanations to each petition. The driving thought is first to love God above all things, and then to apply that love toward my neighbor in the same way as I ask for God to love me (see Mt. 7:11-12; 22:26-40).
The word “Hail” in the refrain is meant in the old sense of a greeting. It greets the coming kingdom of Christ in a couple of ways: First it connects each stanza’s prayer for leading a Godly life, which usually comes right before the refrain, to praying for God’s kingdom to come “here in time”( see Luther’s explanation to the 2nd petition of the Lord’s Prayer). Second, it connects to the prayer for God’s kingdom to come in the “hereafter in eternity” (ibid) sense that gets represented in the Revelation 22 “Come” that follows in the second line of the refrain. Using a greeting acts as an expression of confidence and certain hope that God grants this prayer: that His kingdom is indeed coming and we greet it in faith (see Heb. 11:13).