Character and Conduct – 8 October – Prayer

WE DO not present our supplications before Thee for our righteousness, but for Thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do.

Dan. ix. 18, 19

EVERY true prayer has its background and its foreground.   The foreground of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have;  the background of prayer is the quiet earnest desire that the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done.   What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane!   In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to live;  but, behind, there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the whole life for the doing of the will of God…   Leave out the fore-ground – let there be no expression of the wish of him who prays – and there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism.   Leave out the background – let there be no acceptance of the will of God – and the prayer is only an expression of self-will, a petulant claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who prays.   Only when the two, foreground and background, are there together, – the special desire resting on the universal submission, the universal submission opening into the special desire, – only then is the picture perfect and the prayer complete!

PHILLIPS BROOKS

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These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.