| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 1 |
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Jesus gave many teachings regarding prayer. The Lord’s Prayer gathers these teachings together into an example in a few great sentences. This prayer seems to us very simple and easy, but like all of our Lord’s words its petitions are wide and deep, each one carrying an ocean of meaning.
For one thing, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us that we all need to pray. Not to pray is to cut ourself off altogether form God, the source of all good, of all blessing, of all life. No doubt there are men who do not pray and who yet seem to live on and to receive mercies and blessings from god. He does not cut them off from his love though they pay him no honor, recognize him not as their Father. This tells us how gracious God is. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” He continues to love even when his love is slighted and rejected. He never shuts the door on his child — it stands open day and night to the last.
Nevertheless he is an infinite loser who does not pray. He is leaving out of his life all the best things. He is gathering the weeds and pebbles that lie at his feet and missing the crowns which hang above him, ready to be taken and worn. He is missing the love, the companionship and the help of God, without which life in the end can be only a poor shriveled thing, to be cast out to perish. The first thing one begins to do when one comes to one’s self, when one has been born from above, is to pray. The Lord said of Saul, an hour ago a fierce persecutor, now a Christian, “Behold, he prayeth.” That was evidence enough that Saul was no longer a dangerous enemy, that he was now a Christian man.
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