Hallowed Be Your Name

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name.”

For a long time, I repeated those words the way many of us do , familiar, almost automatic. But one day I paused at hallowed be Your name and asked myself what it truly meant. I looked it up. It said, may Your name be truly known and revered. And that stayed with me.

May Your name be truly known.

Because in His name, we find His nature.

Growing up, I heard many descriptions of God. I was told He could be wrathful, jealous, angry. That His mood could change depending on how humanity behaved. Sometimes He blessed, sometimes He cursed. Sometimes He was pleased, sometimes disappointed. These ideas shaped how I thought of Him for a long time, as powerful, yes, but also unpredictable.

But I was also told something else: that God is love, and His love endures forever.

In my own walk with God, in my own life and work, I have come to know Him differently. Not as wrathful. Not as easily angered. Not as distant or changing. I know God as Father. My creator. My source. The best Father there is. A Father who does not withdraw love, who does not fluctuate with my mistakes, who does not love me conditionally.

He lives in me, and I am part of Him. I am part of my brothers and sisters, and they are part of Him too. There is a unity there, a quiet knowing that we are connected in something deeper than appearances.

The God I have come to know is love. He is peace. He is kindness. When He looks upon His children, He sees goodness. He says, it is good. And that goodness is not fragile. It is not easily lost. It is inherent.

So when I say, hallowed be Your name, this is what I mean:

Father, Your name is Love.

Your name is Peace.

Your name is Joy.

Your name is everything that is good.

All You want for Your children is good. All You will for Your sons and daughters is goodness. You are not waiting to punish; You are always inviting us back into remembrance of who we are in You.

To hallow His name, for me, is not just to praise it with words. It is to truly know it. To clear away fear, old stories, and inherited images that no longer reflect the Father I have come to experience. It is to honor His name by living in love, extending peace, and remembering that we are created from goodness and for goodness.

That is the Father I know.

And that is the name I hallow