| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 7 |
Page 5 |
Think, too, who God is. Earthly fathers are limited in their knowledge, in their vision, in their power to help. But God is without limitation. He is almighty. He is not little like you. It is sweet to sit down beside a human friend who is rich in character, in sympathy, in wisdom, in love, in power to help, and to know he is your friend. Some of us know by experience what it is to have such a person to whom we can go with our weakness, our hard questions, our inexperience, and to know that all this friend is and all he has he will put at our disposal. But how little the strongest human friend has power to do for us! He is only human like ourselves.
Then think of the immeasurable greatness, power, wisdom, and love of this Father, with whom you come into communion in the inner chamber, when you have shut the door. When Tennyson was once asked his thought about prayer, he answered, “It is the opening of the sluice gates between God and my soul.” Back of the sluice gates is the great reservoir with its pent up volumes of water. Below it are the fields and gardens to be irrigated, the homes to be supplied with water. The opening of the sluice gates lets the floods in to do their blessed work of renewal and refreshing. Prayer is the sluice gate between God and your soul. You lift the gate when you pray to your Father, and infinite floods of divine goodness and blessing pour into your life.
Our thought of prayer is too often pitiably small, even paltry. Within our reach are vast tides of blessing, and we take only a taste. Many persons seek but the lower and lesser things in prayer, and lose altogether the far more glorious things that are possible to their quest. What did you ask for this morning when you entered into you r inner chamber and shut your door upon your Father and you, and prayed? Did you ask for large things, or only for trifles? For all the fullness of God, or only for bread and clothes and some earthly conveniences? For earth’s tawdriness, or heaven’s eternal things?
“It is true prayer
To seek the Giver more than gift;
God’s life to share,
And love–for this our cry to lift.”
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