March 15

Radiance through prayer

“And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone” (Exod. 34:30).
“And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?”  (Luke 24:32).
“My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue” (Psa. 39:3).

Observe but the man who is much in Heaven, and you observe he is not like others; there is something of that which he hath seen above appeareth in all his duty and conversation.  Nay, take but the same man, immediately when he is returned from these views of bliss, and you perceive he excels himself.  If you would set on this employment, even so would it be with you.  Men would see your face shine, and say, “Surely he hath been with God.”
– Richard Baxter.


John G. Paton, the well-known missionary, had sacred childhood memories of a father who really prayed.  He describes it thus:
“Our home consisted of a ‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and a mid-room, or chamber, called the ‘closet’. . . . The closet was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table, and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding a diminutive light on the scene.  This was the sanctuary of that cottage home.  Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and ‘shut to the door’; and we children got to understand, by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about), that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place.  We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice, pleading as for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy.
“The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light, as of a newborn smile, that always was dawning on my father’s face.  It was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived.  Never, in temple or cathedral, in mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles.”
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