| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 14 |
Page 6 |
May we not say, indeed, that our Lord’s own prayer in the Garden was precisely in the spirit of what the taught his disciples in this petition to ask? He pleaded there that he might not be brought into the terrible trail on whose dark edge he was then kneeling. Yet he did not plead rebelliously. He did not decline to accept the cup if it was not possible for it to be taken away. He only prayed that it possible, if it were in accordance with his Father’s will, he might not be led into the terrible trial.
Our prayer should be in the same spirit. While we ask that we may not be brought into sore testing, we still express our readiness to accept God’s will for us, though it be that we go right on into the heart of the struggle. The petition certainly teaches that it would be presumptuous for us to seek temptation, to ask to be led into it, or to rush into it unbidden of God. If we do this we court peril and we have no promise of divine protection. When God leads us anywhere we go under his sheltering care and need not fear, but when, without his guidance, we go of our own will into places of danger, we take our life into our own hands. Soldiers led by their commander into battle are doing their duty; their place is in the danger. If they fall they fall at their post, they fall under the divine shelter. But if one not a soldier, having no call to enter the battle, no duty on the field, presses forward among the fighting ranks, he is without promise of divine keeping, and if he falls he has thrown his life away.
The same is true of all who in any way expose themselves to peril. The mother, the nurse the physician, whose duty it is to be with the child sick with diphtheria are not to think of the danger. God brought them into the place of peril because their duty was there, and they may leave to him the matter of their keeping. But any one who, uncalled by duty, exposes himself to contagion in the sick-room is tempting God and cannot claim the divine protection. If he contracts the disease he cannot speak of his illness as providential, resigning himself to it as something God has sent to him. God did not send it to him. He went where he had no divine call to go, into danger when he had no duty there, and he can claim no promise of help.
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