14. The element of time in our devotions
14
The element of time in our devotions
“What, could ye not watch with me one hour?…”1 A whole hour, it must be admitted, is a long time. But it is not so much the length of the time: it is rather this—that we really do not know what to do with ourselves for a whole hour.… We have it on our conscience that we ought to be alone with ourselves, and with God, for some decent length of time every night; but then, there is no hour of all the twenty-four that goes so slowly, and that hangs on our hands so heavily, as just the hour of secret prayer.…
You might try this. You might begin by cutting down the hour. If a whole ‘hour’ is too long for you—take half an hour: or even to begin with, take a quarter. Christ is not a hard taskmaster. He will not bind you to a hard-and-fast bargain—if you are unwilling. And besides, you can get through a great deal in half an hour; or even in a quarter of an hour. You can name a great many forgotten people, and a great many forgotten things, in half an hour or even in a quarter. You can go over your past day, in a rough way, in much less than an hour. In very much less, if you are in a hurry.
Then again, there is this to lighten and alleviate the strain. You do not need to lay it on your conscience that you must be on your actual knees all the time. Not at all. Rise up. Walk about the room. Go out and look up at the stars. Say—“What is man that thou art mindful of him?”2 Come in again. Sit down. Take help out of Andrewes, or another.3 Lift up your hands. Lift up your eyes. Recite a promise. Chant a psalm. Say over an Olney or a Wesley Hymn to yourself.…4 Prayer is the most elastic exercise possible. Communion with God has no hard-and-fast rules and regulations. And if, at the end of the half-hour, you are beginning to have some liberty, and possibly to feel some delight—go on.…
Then there is your Bible to help you to fill up your hour. And once you have begun, really, to read your Bible—one hour each night will be far too short. You will forget hours and everything else many a night over your Bible—once you have begun to read it to yourself alone. The Psalms, for instance. The best of the autobiographic and experimental Psalms were written late at night, and when the Psalmists were alone with God. And as they were written, so they must be read. And then, the Gospels. And after them, the Epistles. Take your Bible, then, to help carry you through your hour of prayer. And as you sit down, say—Come, my Lord: for I have an hour free tonight for thee, and for my own soul.…
Whoever you are,—parent or child, old or young, sinner or saint,—give yourself to prayer. Let no distaste for prayer turn you away from it. Let no want of practice, let no difficulty in it, make you give it up in despair. Let no greatness of sin, or frequency of sin, frighten you away from the Throne of Grace.
Begin tonight: and never, on any account, give it over. Whatever else you do, or do not do—in God’s name I beseech you to pray. Pray, and you will pray yourself into a life of pardon and holiness, till you pray yourself into heaven itself. And begin tonight. Only try one week of it, and then judge for yourselves.
*From With Mercy and With Judgment (New York: George H. Doran Co., [1925]), 69, 73-75, 78-79.
1. Matthew 26:40.
2. See Psalm 8:4.
3. On Andrewes, see above, page 20, n. 2.
4. The Olney Hymns were written by John Newton (1725-1807) and William Cowper. A number of them are among the finest evangelical hymns of the eighteenth century. “A Wesley Hymn” is reference to one of the works of Charles Wesley or his older brother John (1703-1791), which are also among the best hymns of eighteenth-century Evangelicalism.