| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 4 |
Page 5 |
In our praying, too, the same is true. It seems to us that the things we desire for our own comfort or pleasure are the things that will be best for us. Indeed we think we cannot be happy, can scarcely even live, unless we get these things that are so dear. Yet if we press these desires with all human eagerness, thinking only of what we want for ourself, and give no thought to the honoring of God, we are very short-sighted, and, at best, are choosing the lower rather than the higher good. To leave out thought of God in anything we seek is to drag our life in the dust when it ought to soar away into the clear blue of heaven.
If, therefore, we make our prayers always for the hallowing of God’s name, first of all, whether the thing we desire be given to us or not, we take our place with God as co-worker, and are lifted up into companionship with him. It may be that the thing we sought so earnestly may be withheld form us, or that the sorrow of loss against which we pleaded with such intensity desire, shall come with all its crushing weight; still if our prayer was “Hallowed be thy name, whatever the cost may be to me,” we shall find the glory of God shining in the very darkness about us, and the blessing of God in the very bitterness of the grief in which we sit.
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