October 17

Importance of prayer

“And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray” (Mark 6:46).
“But so much more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (Luke 5:15-16).

The struggle to maintain a quiet time alone is great, and the godliest people have been most aware of it. Satan opposes a true prayer life more than any other spiritual activity. Andrew Bonar aptly pictures this struggle:
“Satan, like the lapwing, drew me away from the real object (prayer and fellowship with God) by suggesting every now and then something about some other part of my work . . . and so the best hours of yesterday were in a great measure lost, so far as ‘prayer and transfiguration’ might have been.”

On the brink of eternity, prayer will assume its right perspective. We busy Christians can well afford to heed the warning of a reformer, Josephine Butler, who did much for her own sex:
“Many continue to postpone and to subordinate the claims of the spiritual life to the constantly pressing claims (sacred claims also) of their fellow-creatures, and of the good works in which they are engaged. At the last, when earth’s claims are fading and the spirit is called into the presence of God, conscience will speak, and the poor soul may reproach itself in the spirit of the lament which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Wolsey in his last moments: ‘O, Cromwell, Cromwell! Had I but served my God with half the zeal that I have served my king!’
“In the clear light of eternity all things assume their right proportion. We have worked, we have slaved for duty, we have worn ourselves out in the service of humanity. That is good, that is noble; yet an inward voice will tell us in some silent hour that we should have worked better and served humanity better had we possessed the moral force to withdraw at times from life’s crowded avenues, had we firmly refused some of the thousand claims which pressed upon us in order that our speech and our action might have possessed more of the Divine, more of ‘spirit and of life.’”

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