The 4-Letter Word Most People Hate—or Hate to Hear

P-R-A-Y.
What is it about prayer? If I talk about it, the conversation either begins and ends talking ABOUT it (as, you see, talking about prayer is ok, just, please, don’t do it) or it ends (people don’t want to talk about it, it’s too personal or some such). But it’s there—from youth to old age, prayer keeps returning.
So, why do we pray?--- I am not speaking of the “transactional” prayers in which types of prayers and sacrifices function as part of the economy of “bargaining” for a divine favor or good fortune from some spirit-god, as shamans, witchdoctors and other “spirit-guides” do.
I am speaking of the appeal that we--finite, mortal and flawed people--make to all-powerful and all-knowing, creator and sustainer God. What is our unspoken or assumed expectation of prayer? I sense it is often not simply petitioning the Almighty, but also, a desire to experience His immanence in our (little) lives. Yes, we may pray because we seek help, but we wish for transcendence.
What is the thing least understood thing about prayer, particularly petition (request) prayers? People are surprised and/or disappointed that they don’t get what they pray for just because they prayed for it – at least not every time. Which is rather curious, if God is who He is and we are who we are, then we should be okay with it.
There is a group of people who refuse to pray because “if God is really a beneficent and all-knowing, then I need not pray. Without even asking, He’s rushing to bestow on me what I wish, which makes prayer unnecessary.” I am not sure if this is challenging God, or pride, or laziness, or mere disbelief—or a combination, but it sounds like the person thinking this way is the Boss of the World. I would think that if my teenager needs and wants breakfast before school, then he should move to the kitchen where the breakfast food is—he’ll not get it lying in bed. (-Charity Johnson)
George MacDonald addresses it further:
“But if God is so good as you represent Him [to be], and if He knows all that we need, and far better than we do ourselves, why [is] it necessary to ask Him for anything?”
I answer,
“What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer [is] the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?
Hunger may drive the runaway child [back] home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner.
Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need:prayer is the beginning of that communion, [there is] some need that is the motive of that prayer.
So begins a communion, a taking up with God, a coming-to-one with Him. [This] is the sole end of prayer, [even] of existence itself in its infinite phases.
We must ask that we may receive:[however] it is not God’s end in having us pray to receive with respect to our lower needs [since] He could give us everything without that.
[God would] bring us to His knee… [He] withholds [so] that we may ask."

---
from George MacDonald, 365 Readings, edited by CS Lewis (language updated)
Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York

It's Another Season and We're Still God's BeLoved

My beloved is mine and I am His;
He feedeth among the Lillies…

If all those monarchs that command
the servile quarters of this earthly ball,
should tender, in exchange, their land--
I would not change my fortunes for them all.
Their wealth is but a counter to my coin:
The world's but theirs,
but my Beloved's mine.

...`Tis not the sacred wealth of all the Nine
can buy my heart from Him,
or His, from being mine.

Nor Time, nor Place, nor Chance, nor Death can bow
my least desires unto the least remove;
He’s firmly mine by oath;
I, His, by vow;
He’s mine by faith;
and I am His by love;
He’s mine by water;
I am His by wine;
Thus I my Best-beloved’s am,
thus He is mine.

He is my Altar;
I, his Holy Place;
I am His guest;
and He, my living food;
I’m his by penitance;
He, mine by Grace;
I’m his, by purchase;
He is mine, by blood;
He’s my supporting elme,
and I, His vine:
Thus I am my Best-beloved’s am,
thus He is mine.

• Emblemes, 1635, by Francis Quarles

Real Wealth

"Did you ever think the origin of the word avarice?" "No." "It comes, at least it seems to me to come, from the same root as the verb have. It is the desire to call things ours. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the pocket, or the power, [as] having:
but things so held cannot really be had; having is but an illusion in regard to things.
It is only what we can be with that we really possess--what is of our kind, from God to the lowest animal partaking of humanity.

• George MacDonald, "365 Readings of George MacDonald" by CS Lewis.

Life - Rehearsed, Cut Short and Rectified

What difference does it make to worship an infinite God?

"But God’s infinitude belongs to us and is made known to us for our everlasting profit. Yet, just what does it mean to us beyond the mere wonder of thinking about it? …Because God’s nature is infinite, everything that flows out of it is infinite also.
We poor human creatures are constantly being frustrated by limitations imposed upon us from without and within. The days of the years of our lives are few, and swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are forced to lay our instruments down. There is simply not time enough to think, to become, to perform what the constitution of our natures indicates we are capable of.
How satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years.

God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. …time is [no longer] a devouring beast; [but] before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands. The foe of the old human race becomes the friend of the new…But there is more. God’s gifts in nature have their limitations. They are finite because they have been created, but the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus is as limitless as God. The Christian ...possesses God’s own life and shares His infinitude with Him. In God there is life enough for all and time enough to enjoy it. Whatever is possessed of natural life runs through its cycle from birth to death and ceases to be, but the life of God returns upon itself and ceases never. …this is life eternal: to know the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent."

• A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (from chapter 8, "God's Infinitude")

Exhale...

{Time off}

It is an honorable thought,
And makes one lift one's hat,
As one encountered gentlefolk
Upon a daily street,


That we've immortal place,
Though pyramids decay,
And kingdoms, like the orchard,
Flit russetly away.

• Emily Dickinson

"A Litanie" Part 1

A Litanie
Father


Father of Heaven, and him, by whom
It, and us for it, and all else, for us
Thou madest, and govern'st ever, come
And re-create me, now grown ruinous:
My heart is by dejection, clay,
And by self-murder, red.
From this red earth, O Father, purge away
All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned
I may rise from death, before I'm dead.

• John Donne

Taking Stock of Our Place in Time and Space

Let us, then, take our compass;

we are something, [but]...we are not everything.

The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing;

and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite.

Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

• Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996.

Always with you.

What is better than having the people you love most with you?

The Father says He will never leave us or forsake us. In the parable of the "forgiving father and the prodigal son" Jesus chooses important words when he retells what the father says to the son who stayed home:

"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.' "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.

But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
" 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' " (Found in Luke, chapter 15, verses 25-31)

In contrast to this son, Jesus was well aware of the nearness of His Father. Look at this in his foretelling of his crucifixion:

"Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." (Found in John 8:28-30 , King James Version)

Still Jesus wanted his own friends to be with him. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he went to the garden to pray and took his friends, the apostles to be with him in his sorrow:

"He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me."

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Found in Matthew 26:37-39, New International Version)

But, his friends were not attentive and instead of being there for Jesus, they dozed even as Jesus prayed in extreme anguish. Later, knowing their failing, Jesus re-emphasised the faithfulness of the Father God:

Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
(Found in John 16:32, King James Version)

God is here and He cares.

The Best Rest

The Temper

How should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rhymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
Although there were some fortie heav’ns, or more,
Sometimes I peer above them all;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.
O rack me not to such a vast extent;
Those distances belong to thee:
The world’s too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me.
Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch
A crumb of dust from heav’n to hell?
Will great God measure with a wretch?
Shall he thy stature spell?
O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there:
Then of a sinner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear.
Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best:
Stretch or contract me, thy poor debtor:
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.
Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there:
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev’ry where.

• George Herbert (1593–1632)