Week 30 Sunday
Week 30 Sunday
Forgiveness for Economic Sins
Matthew 18:21-35
We continue into this week our meditation on the Disciples’ Prayer. We come to the second petition on the human side of the prayer, “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I use the word trespasses instead of debts. The word debts has now a monetary significance that has narrowed it, while trespasses has the wider significance of anything we have done against another; any trespass we have made upon the rights, upon the soul of another, any hurt inflicted.
But the prayer connects the forgiveness of trespasses with the getting of daily bread by an “and.” Are most of the trespasses we need to have forgiven connected with the economic side of life, connected with the getting of our daily bread? Yes. Our greatest sins are economic sins, sins so hidden under respectability and under custom that we are scarcely aware of them. Luxuries are the things that make others do without necessities. That bites into the consciences of us all. We see how few produce and how little they get for the production, and how many, as nonproducing middlemen, rake off exorbitant profits as production passes through their hands on its way to the consumer. Then we realize that there is a lot of trespassing, both upon the producer and the consumer. And trespassing that hurts. And when we see producers, in turn, deliberately keep down production to keep up prices—though in doing so they may cause children to starve—then we know we must pray this prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses.”
We will have to continue to pray that prayer until we come to a cooperative order, an order in which, when I work for myself, I work for others, and when I work for others, I work for myself. That would be an order in which I love my neighbor as I love myself. That would be the Way. Until then, we will stumble from depression to depression. These depressions are God’s goads, goading us to the Way. If we won’t learn from the Way, we have to learn the hard way. If we won’t take from God’s hand of grace, we have to take from God’s hand of judgment.
O God, you are teaching us your Way, teaching us through Christ and through catastrophe. Help us to take the way of Christ instead of the hard way of catastrophe. For we are stupid and blind and we hurt ourselves. Full of self-inflicted bruises we come to you for forgiveness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “It is good for me to have been in trouble—to learn thy will” (Ps. 119:71 Moffatt).
Week 30 Monday
For Thine Is the Kingdom
Luke 11:20; 1 Corinthians 15:25; Jude 24-25
We are to ask God to forgive us on condition that we forgive others. If we do not forgive others, then we can never, never be forgiven. We have broken down the bridge over which we must pass. This necessity for giving forgiveness if you are to get it, is the only portion of the prayer upon which Jesus turns and comments. He thus showed the importance he attached to this matter, vital importance. And note that the forgiveness we are to give others is past, not future—as we “ourselves have forgiven” (Moffatt). The basis of expectancy of forgiveness is the fact that we have already forgiven others.
Consider the next item in the Disciples’ Prayer, “And lead us, not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.” I have inserted the first comma to the King James Version, which is legitimate, since there was no punctuation in the original Greek. That changes the sense. The prayer is for leading, “Lead us.” The rest points to where the leading should be, “not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This portion of the prayer is hardly morally intelligible without the punctuation, for God cannot lead into temptation. At first sight, the prayer seems to end on a low note. We would have expected some high exultant note. And yet I wonder if the petition itself is not the highest, “Lead us, so that evil is not a temptation to us any longer.” We are to get to the place where we are beyond temptation. That is victory.
The last portion is actually a prayer for deliverance from evil. Not a deliverance from this, that, or the other evil, but from evil itself. To Jesus, evil was evil in whatever form it came—whether in the evil of the flesh or the evil of the disposition, whether in the individual will or in the corporate will—evil was never good and good was never evil.
The prayer ends with an assertion, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” Note, “Thine is the kingdom”—now. God has never abdicated. God still rules. The “power” and the “glory” are kingdom power and kingdom glory—the unworthy type of earthly power and glory Jesus rejected in the wilderness struggle. The kingdom power and the kingdom glory are the only “power” and “glory.” All else is decaying power and fading glory.
O Christ, you are not only purifying us through prayer; you are purifying our very prayers. When our prayers have a bath of your mind, these rise up how pure, how simple, how real! Purify our prayers. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Thinking on how to live, I turn to thy directions” (Ps. 119:59 Moffatt).
Week 30 Tuesday
Prayer Is Reality
Luke 11:11-13; Ephesians 6:18; Jude 20-21
We are now ready to consider prayer in more detail:
(1) Prayer is Reality. There are some who feel that prayer is good exercise, good autosuggestion, but that it is not reality. Suppose it were only autosuggestion, then it would be worthwhile, for it would be good autosuggestion. It would suggest to us the highest, namely, that there is purpose in the universe, that it is a good purpose, that you can ally yourself with that purposeful goodness and live by it. This is far better in its psychological results than if you were to suggest to yourself that there is no purpose behind the universe and the whole process is leading nowhere except to ultimate despair. That is bad autosuggestion with bad results. If prayer were only autosuggestion, I would still pray. It’s a better hypothesis with better results. But I would find it difficult to pray for long, for we cannot give ourselves to an unreality. I do not want to live in a paradise if it turns out to be a fool’s paradise. But how could prayer be unreal, if its results are so real? “His face shows he is a man of prayer,” was said of a Christian. Those who pray not only have better faces; they have better lives behind those faces—more power, more purity, more peace, more poise.
To talk with God, no breath is lost,
Talk on!
To walk with God, no strength is lost,
Walk on!
To wait on God, no time is lost,
Wait on!*
“I’ve let down in my quiet time and I’ve suffered defeats,” said a returned missionary from China. Defeat in prayer meant defeat in practice. Mackenzie King, longtime prime minister of Canada, says, “I am able to meet my files with confidence and poise when I have spent a quiet time each day with God. A young woman had several breakdowns and was on the verge of another; she went to her doctor and was surprised at his words, “Jane, I don’t know what to do for you. You had better go home and get on your knees and pray. She did—and arose a person. “Mother, wasn’t that strange for him to say that to me?” she remarked. No, it wasn’t, for experience had shown the doctor, skeptic though he was, that something happens in prayer—something very real.
O Christ, I know that you are the finest character who ever lived and you prayed. Could unreality have created you, the only Real? Then teach me your secret, help me to know how to pray—really. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Wait. Wait for God; I shall again be praising him, my saving help, my God” (Ps. 43:6 Moffatt).
*From Anonymous, “To Talk with God.”
Week 30 Wednesday
To Rise Up as One Imperishable
Matthew 14:23; 17:20; Luke 9:29
We continue regarding prayer as Reality.
A sailor, writing to his family, described the evening prayer time when he and two or three of his mates gathered, “We offer a prayer of thanksgiving for all his wonderful gifts and loving care, and ask for new strength to meet each day. It is these experiences that we will remember when the war is over; the rest is better forgotten.” Those sailors on the deck of that ship knew when they touched Reality.
They knew what this German Christian, Mawilda von Meysenburg, knew, “To kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable.”* I know that when I pray, I’m better; when I don’t, I’m worse. I touch life with a perishable touch when I touch it without prayer; but when I do pray, then I touch life with an imperishable touch. If you don’t have a quiet time in the morning, you’ll probably have an unquiet time at night. A member of the House of Representatives said, “After a quiet time of prayer in these breakfast groups, my desk is cleared more easily.” His desk was cleared for he was cleared—by prayer.
After four weeks of failure by the Constitutional Convention to write one word of a constitution for the United States, Benjamin Franklin addressed George Washington:
I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. . . . And I also believe that, without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial, local interest, our projects will be confounded, . . . and mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move,
That henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning.**
From that moment they began to make progress and produced the Constitution, which Gladstone said was “the most wonderful work known to me, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.”*** Prayer turned the tide.
O God, I know that you are putting prayer into my heart, not to mock me but to make me. I know that you are inspiring prayer to answer it. I know that my prayer moment is my most real moment. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Yet I am always beside thee; thou holdest my right hand, guiding me with thy counsel” (Ps. 73:23-24 Moffatt).
*William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Random House, 1902), 290.
**Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston: Hillard, Gray, 1840), 154–55.
***W. E. Gladstone, “Kin Beyond the Sea,” North American Review (September 1878).
Week 30 Thursday
Prayer Is Receptivity
Luke 11:9-10; John 15:4, 16
We studied yesterday the fact that prayer is Reality. During a meeting of the National Bankers’ Association, the man who was elected president of the association made the following statement, “In all of the great moments of my life, I have always prayed, and I would like at this time to ask the members of this association to bow with me in prayer.” When he finished, there was hardly a dry eye in that large meeting. That group had touched Reality—touched it through prayer.
We come now to our next step:
(2) Prayer is Receptivity. To put the first two together: Prayer is Receptivity to Reality. God, the infinite Reality, is pervading us and invading us. The pathway over which God comes to the center of our being and purposes is receptivity. I am tempted to put it “relaxed receptivity,” but perhaps that would be unnecessary, for receptivity, to be receptive, must be relaxed. You cannot inscribe anything on a tense conscious mind. Receptivity is the surrendering of all fears, all doubts, all inhibitions, especially all self; for the ego, even in God’s presence, asserts itself, wants to be God. It must be surrendered.
That surrender does not mean collapse. It does not mean that we become mushy meaninglessness in God’s presence. It means that we offer to God an alert self, not now eager for its own way but for the Way. A self that, knowing its place as second, is eager to serve the first. A surrendered self is not pulp. It is a person, and now a person with a controlling purpose, a purpose to follow the Person wholly.
A shop assistant puts it this way, “I just go quiet and empty into God’s presence and give myself time for his loving counsel to come through.” “Time for his loving counsel to come through”—time and receptivity. Time alone would not be enough unless along with it were the alert receptivity. A schoolgirl of fifteen told of her plan, “I get into bed and think prayers, and then I relax my mind and body and something comes to me. I feel as if I were in a different world and am so happy.” She was in a different world—the invading Love of God took possession of the center of her being, thrown open through relaxation and receptivity. Receptivity is faith, no longer struggling but serene and securing.
O living Christ, who comes to my heart amid the silences, and who heals every hurt in your coming, I throw open every pore of my being to you, to your healing. You alone are all I want. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Leave all to the Eternal, who loves you” (Ps. 55:22 Moffatt).
Week 30 Friday
Prayer Is Response
Acts 13:2-4; 14:8-10
Prayer is Receptivity, we said yesterday. A further step today:
(3) Prayer is Response. If prayer were only receptivity, it would leave us leaning too much toward the passive side. It would leave us in an attitude of taking without undertaking. The taking of God must produce undertaking for God. The quiet must quicken. And it does.
Prayer is creative. When our lesser life touches Life it becomes alive, alive to the fingertips. The account says, “In the early morning, long before daylight, he got up and went away out to a lonely spot. He was praying there when Simon and his companions hunted him out and discovered him; they told him, ‘Everybody is looking for you,’ but he said to them, ‘Let us go . . . that I may preach. . . . That is why I came out here’ ” (Mark 1:35-38 Moffatt). He came out to this lonely spot—to preach! “That is why I came out here.” The praying was preaching, at least, preaching in incubation. The praying stimulated the preaching, the receptivity became response. The impression of the prayer hour became the expression of the preaching hour. The most active persons in the world are the people who become inactive in the Silence. There they learn to live in the passive voice, that they might live more effectively in the active voice.
Alexis Carrel says, “Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate.” Prayer is a form of energy, for those who pray do not waste energy in fussy activity—running around in circles, getting nowhere fast. The poised, prayerful heart is sure of its directions, is sure of its resources, and moves from task to task with calm confidence. The prayerless are hurried, flurried, worried. They wear themselves out with frictions. A student in a theological seminary told me of the profound effect upon him and others when Toyohiko Kagawa stood up and prayed a prayer of a single sentence. “O God, may we wake up to Jesus.”* Prayer does wake us up to Jesus—does give us his awareness and his energy.
You must use your hands while praying, though,
If an answer you would get;
For prayer-worn knees and a rusty hoe
Never raised a big crop yet.**
O God, wake us up to Jesus. Give us his passion for prayer and his passion for people. May our needs drive us to you and the needs of others drive us to them. For we have discovered a working force. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The Eternal was on your side, because you were on his side” (2 Chron. 15:2 Moffatt).
*Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960) was a Japanese activist and missionary.
**Most likely from “Prayer Is Power,” Reader’s Digest 38 (1941): 227.
Week 30 Saturday
Prayer Is Renewal
Romans 12:2; Ephesians 3:14-19
We come now to the next fact of prayer:
(4) Prayer is Renewal. Like a watch, life has a tendency to run down. It needs rewinding. Prayer rewinds the springs of life. You don’t have to tinker with the hands to make them go by shoving them around, not if the spring is sound and wound. Prayer brings resources.
John Burroughs suggested a sentence for one of the rooms of the Bok Singing Tower, “I come here to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world.”* It is so easy to get lost in the world. I come to the prayer hour to find myself and my directions again. Prayer is the period of circling, like the homing pigeon, circling to gain a homeward direction. To prayer we come, turning round and round on ourselves. From prayer we go with the homeward direction in the heart. The wings no longer hesitate for the heart is sure.
And in prayer we find not only our directions but also our resources to go the directions we know. It was said of Jesus, “The news of him spread abroad more and more; large crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their complaints, while he kept in lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:15-16 Moffatt). He ran away from the crowds to pray. We run after the crowds—and don’t pray. Hence we don’t get the crowds, for the crowds see we have nothing to give. We preachers are often primarily crowd-conscious and secondarily prayer-conscious. Jesus was primarily prayer-conscious and secondarily crowd-conscious. He got both. We get neither. And when the crowds got to him, he had something to give, for the next verse says, “Now the power of the Lord was present for the work of healing.” Those two things were cause and effect, “He kept in lonely places and prayed. . . . The power of the Lord was present.” These two things are also cause and effect, “He kept in public places and was prayerless. . . . The weakness of man was present.”
Prayer is a lift-up with no let-down, for it is no mere shot-in-the-arm, a stimulant. It is a renewal, a renewal of resources. For in prayer you have a life transfusion. You are God-infused.
O God, give me a transfusion of your blood. Put within my withered veins your life so that I shall live, live abundantly and vibrantly and vitally.
’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
O life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.**
Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Never shall I forget thy laws, for they put new life into me” (Ps. 119:93 Moffatt).
*See http://boktowergardens.org/.
**Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Two Voices,” The Complete Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, 67.