To be near unto God - pagina 32

we feel that our prayer obtains free access to the throne of the Almighty, then we understand from our own experience what the Psalmist wrote about the blessedness of the moment in which the Lord regarded again the prayer of the soul that was destitute. Is now the solution of this apparent contradiction as impossible as it seems ? By no means; provided we have eyes to observe the part which God plays in our prayer-life. When we deem that prayer is original with ourselves; when we do not believe that the spirit of prayer goes out in us from God, and we imagine that God's part in our prayer only begins when he hears and answers it, then indeed we face an insoluble riddle. But if we take it in the other, truer way, and make it clear to our mind that God has quickened our prayer-life and that he directs and carries it, the matter gleams with light. The farmer sows the seed in the newly-ploughed furrows and leaves it alone to do its work, and only returns to the field when the dew of heaven and sunshine have caused the seed to sprout and to send the blade upward, and the corn to ripen in the ear, that he might gather the harvest.

And such is the case in our prayer-life. Our Father who is in heaven begins it by sowing the seed of prayer in our hearts. And then follows a slow process. The prayer-life must develop in us. Prayer must ripen in the soul. And only when this result has been obtained, and our prayer has unfolded itself in that higher form, does the heavenly Husbandman regard the prayer-life in us and enrich it with abounding answers. 24

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