The Lord's Prayer - Hallowed By Thy Name

On Thursday, August 22nd, a blog called Maybe Worth Sharing shared a number of cute snippets about Children in Church, including:

One particular four-year old prayed,
"And forgive us our trash baskets
as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."

I don't think about the Lord's Prayer much, because we don't recite it often in the Mormon church, but since the Lord said "After this manner... pray ye," which I take to mean "Say prayers that are kind of like this," perhaps it'd be important for me to take note of exactly what was in that prayer. And even though I'd like to start with the "trash baskets" (because it's funny), I should probably start at the beginning.


After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Matthew 6: 9

"Hallowed" isn't a word we use often. Various online dictionaries define the word as meaning, holy, sacred, sanctified, consecrated, or at the very least, highly venerated. (I don't know what that means for the "Deathly Hallows." Maybe a Potter fan reading this could clear that up for us in the comments section.)

Taken literally, it seems to be saying that the name of God is sacred - That God is such an exalted being that even His name is holy. That would explain why it doesn't appear much in the scriptures, if it's even in the scriptures at all. If it were, I'm sure thousands of people would take it in vain, as they do with the words "God," "Christ," and "Jesus."

But, and this is just personal interpretation, I don't think God's name is really all that important. I mean, what's in a name? It's a word that denotes identity, but it's the Person Himself who's special, and if His name is sacred, too, it's only because of its association with Him. And I have it on good authority that "His power and glory are not diminished should we disregard, deny, or even defile His name." -President Uchtdorf, Love of God. I don't know if His name actually matters at all.

But I do know that He matters, and that we need to respect Him, which I guess includes respecting His name. To get closer to the meaning of the phrase, "Hallowed be thy name," I think it's meant to be a sign of respect to the Being to whom the pray-er is speaking. When we say that, I don't think we're saying "You've got a great name." I think it's more like "You're so great, even your Name is great." At least, that's the feeling I get from it.

Whether His name is literally sacred or not, it doesn't change the fact that He, God, is holy (or "Hallowed," if you will), and we would do well to remember that, especially when we pray to Him. Though we may strive to cultivate a Father-son or Father-daughter relationship with Him, and though He is our Heavenly Friend who helps us in our times of need, we must never forget that He is, and always will be, our God, not just our "Dad," or an emergency responder to call when we're in trouble. In order to have a healthy relationship with Him, and I might argue, in order to have a healthy life, we must remember to respect and properly worship God. And it would seem, according to the Lord's Prayer, that such respect includes giving some amount of reverence to our Father's name.