| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 6 |
We can do little more than this in any request for temporal things. Says Archdeacon Farrar: “There are two things to remember about prayers for earthly things: One, that to ask mainly for earthly blessings is a dreadful dwarfing and vulgarization of the grandeur of prayer, as though you asked for a handful of grass, when you might ask for a handful of emeralds; the other that you must always ask for earthly desires with absolute submission of your own will to God’s.” So silence is ofttimes the best and truest praying – bowing before God in life’s great crises; but saying nothing, leaving the burden in God’s hand without any choosing. We are always safe when we let God guide us in all our ways.
“Ill that he blesses is our good,
And unblest good is ill;
And all is right that seems most wrong,
If it be his sweet will.”
Many of the richest possibilities of prayer lie beyond valleys of pain and sorrow. The best things of life cannot be gotten save at sore cost. When we pray for more holiness, we do not know what we are asking for; at least we do not know the price we must pay to get that which we ask. Our “Nearer, my God, to thee,” must be conditioned by, and often can come only through,
“E’en though it be a cross
That raiseth me.”
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