Revealing Typos

Revealing Typos

Matthew 6:9-13

            Do typos drive you crazy?  They do me.  As a lifelong teacher I’ve seen more than enough of them.  Sometimes they’re annoying, like using your instead of you’re or the other way round.  Sometimes they’re glaring, like using car’s (possessive) instead of cars (plural).  Sometimes they’re downright funny.  Many humorous ones appear in newspaper headlines.  When the headline writer doesn’t think things through the result can be interesting.  We’ve all seen those headlines.  One of my favorites isn’t exactly a typo, but it does create a “Huh?” moment. 

In Illinois there are two towns close together, Normal, and Oblong.  A headline once appeared in the local paper:  “Oblong Man Marries Normal Woman.”  If you live in that part of Illinois, the headline makes sense.  The rest of us respond with, “What did it say?”

A few years ago a friend of mine introduced me to a book entitled, A Diary of Private Prayer, by John Baillie.  I’ve quoted several of his prayers in this space.  Baillie wrote two prayers for every day of the month, morning and evening.  There are also two prayers for Sunday.  You can substitute the Sunday prayers for the ones for that day, or (as I do) read both.  Baillie uses old biblical English (Thee, Thou, Thy when addressing God, for instance), and all biblical quotes are from the Old King James Version.  While the antiquated language is sometimes disconcerting, there’s something majestic about it as well.

Unfortunately, the editors of Baillie’s book missed a few typos.  I don’t know whether Baillie wrote incorrectly and the editor didn’t check thoroughly, or the typesetter goofed and no one caught it.  Either way, there are a few places that make the reader say, “What?”

Two of the entries end with the Lord’s Prayer.  One of them has a typo.  The opening sentence reads, “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name.”

The eye reads the line, stops, goes back and reads it again.  At first the typo glares out at the reader: “ERROR!  ERROR!  ERROR!”  After a few times, the typo begins to make its own kind of sense. 

Isn’t it true that we are hallowed—made holy—by God’s name?  We know we have no righteousness in and of ourselves.  Isaiah says it (“our righteousness is like filthy rags”).  David and the other psalmists tell us the same thing.  Paul says it in many ways.  Jesus says we have no grounds on which to come before God.  Without God’s righteousness we have nothing to cling to.

But God calls us to be holy.  Acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is a good start, but only a start.  This is how we begin our Christian walk, a path we will follow until it’s time for us to be with God.  The only way to grow closer to God is to try, day by day, to be more like God, to be more holy—to be hallowed by God’s name.

Sometimes typos can be humorous.  Sometimes they can be grating because of bad grammar or incorrect spelling.  Sometimes we grind our teeth at the seeming incompetence of the writer.  Occasionally the typo makes as much sense as the correct words.  This is the case here.  When we pray we need to say to God, “hallowed be thy name,” to recognize the innate holiness of that name and to give God what God is due. 

But perhaps we should also, at times, recognize our sinfulness and misquote the prayer, saying, “hallowed by thy name,” admitting that we are nothing without God’s righteousness, and recognizing our need to be completely dependent on God’s grace.