I think this quote can touch a lot of the places I’m walking through as a father.  It’s admittedly about a common prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, but it seems to relate to the giving and surrendering of the will, the offering of many little, hardly-noticed acts which are so common in parenting.  Can what a mother or father does be turned into the Divine’s advantage?  Can wiping a nose or a butt or a shoe be taken into the larger world of God’s stuff?  One would hope.

This is from Evelyn Underhill’s reflection on the phrase, “Thy Kingdom Come”:

Thus more and more we must expect our small action to be overruled and swallowed up in the vast Divine action; and be ready to offer it, whatever it may be, for the fulfillment of God’s purpose, however much this may differ from our purpose.  The Christian turns again and again from that bewildered contemplation of history in which God is so easily lost, to the prayer of filial trust in which He is always found; knowing here that those very things which seem to turn to man’s disadvantage, may yet work to the Divine advantage.