From the earliest days of the church, Christians have ended the Lord's Prayer with the words "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." But those words are not in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew or Luke, so we don't find them with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples.

However, we do find something very similar in a prayer of King David from the Old Testament. Our passage today from 1 Chronicles 29 includes the lines "Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory. . . . Yours, Lord, is the kingdom. . . ." And we can easily see that these words make a fitting closing to the prayer Jesus taught.

What's more, it was a standard practice to end prayers with a doxology—a declaration of highest praise. So, like other Christians throughout the centuries, we can declare this doxology with confidence and joy when we come to the end of the Lord's Prayer.

These words remind us of the majesty, power, and glory of God, our Savior. They resonate in our hearts and assure us that God loves us, provides for us, and sustains the world he has made. They also point forward to the day when God's kingdom will be fully known and all of creation will rejoice and praise his holy name forever.