BE STEADFAST IN PRAYER!
1. A Gain and a Protection
O PRAY for me!
That is one of the cries that frequently come to us from the sick and the dying—sometimes because they have not themselves learned how to pray in the days that passed, but always with the consciousness that prayer is needed.
Pray! sayeth our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is helpful to pray. And on the background of nearly two thousand years of actual experience His church responds: Indeed, it is helpful to pray!
"Ask, and it shall be given you ... for everyone that asketh receiveth.... Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Mat. 7, 7, etc.)
The prayer is a gain to us since we have such a generous Father who will not refuse us anything good, and who has it in His power to give us all.
But the prayer also is a protection. "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation" (Mat. 26, 41). The ability to be absorbed in prayer is a protection against temptations, and in the prayer strength and fortitude are secured with which to resist the temptations.
In complete realization of this the Apostles continuously implore us to pray.
Make the prayer a regular and constant feature of your daily life. Don't let it be a matter of chance whether you offer a prayer or not. Don't let every insignificant hindrance prevent you from saying your prayer. Many of the ancient leaders in the church of the Lord set aside several hours a day, parts of their most propitious working time, for praying—and considered that a gain. Thus Luther often devoted three or four hours a day to constant prayer. You may not accomplish anything like that, but you are able, nevertheless, to give the prayer a fixed and constant place on your schedule for every day, and then you will experience that it is a gain and a protection; for "prayer brings down from Heaven the peace of God; it brings down the strength to love and revere Him; it brings down from Above relief in the hour of distress, and it brings infinite comfort at the moment of death."
2. What Mother Taught Me
A chaplain at one of our insane asylums related the following:
One day when he had been preaching a sermon to these poor, insane people among whom only a few were able to make out what he said, one of them came to him and announced: "I, too, can pray!" The chaplain stopped surprised, because the man was completely an idiot. He had forgotten everything—his name, his age, his home; about these things he could give no information whatever. Somewhat doubtfully, the chaplain asked him: "What can you pray?"
The poor fellow righted himself a little and answered: "What mother taught me"; he then folded his hands and spoke the following verse with perfect ease, and without mistakes:
Lord Jesus, who dost love me,
O, spread thy wings above me,
And shield me from alarm.
Everything was forgotten. Not one event in his life was he able to recall in his memory. Everything had been left out of his soul, out of his memory—only not that one prayer his mother had taught him.
I have myself had a somewhat similar experience. It was a Dane who was not wholly demented—rather what is known in the vernacular as "crazy"—and a little more. He never did any harm, and for that reason he was sent to the poor-house instead of to an insane asylum. Whenever he found an opportunity, he made his escape, and once in a while he came to my home—once at eventide and he was then allowed to stay overnight. In the evening he sat plucking at his clothes just like a child, and he then said: "I'm clean enough, all right." A little later he said: "I ain't forgotten how to pray—want to hear me?" Then he folded his hands and spoke two little verses of the kind a mother teaches her very young child. These he could remember. It was the same thing over again: What mother taught me.
Remember this, you Christian mothers!
3. The Evening Prayer: A Protection
Above all, it is important to give the evening prayer a fixed and permanent place in the daily schedule of our life. When we intend to pray for something, the time at which it is done may be relatively immaterial, but if we think of the prayer as a protection, the evening prayer goes before anything else.
And why?
Because it requires the peaceful quiet of eventide—and the same thing is true about all kinds of silly fun and of evil. In point of time, the evening prayer meets with the tempting voices of wickedness that sound with the greatest irresistance in the darkness. A decisive battle thus takes place between the tempting voices of wickedness and the evening prayer—a battle about time; it is a Whether—Or, for to divide the time in twain in this matter is impossible. It is not possible to devote one evening hour to wickedness, and the other to prayer. Then, if the evening prayer is given a regular place in one's everyday life, it is a protection against the temptations.
Therefore the evening prayer should be a part of the child's life even 'way back in the days of the cradle. And therefore we praise the fact that the evening prayer is just that prayer which it is easiest for a mother to make a part of the everyday life of the child; this is not a mere accident, but is due to that grace of God which descends upon Christian mothers. Say the evening prayer with your child, and for your child, every evening when you tuck him or her into bed—do it even before the babbling voice of the child is able to say the words after you—and do never miss an evening!
The evening prayer which has thus been implanted in the heart of the child because of the privilege and the intense love granted to the mother-heart, and which is to be protected by that same love throughout the years to come, will prove to be a real protection to the child during its earliest youth, which is just the very time when it stands most in need of protection because the tempting voices of wickedness resound with the greatest power in its own breast. For that reason the time of youth is that period of our life when we stand most in need of the evening prayer.
Loving parents often are somewhat worried when they discuss the day that the children must go out into the world. Now and then a tear drops from the mother's eye when she thinks that her half-grown boy or girl soon must leave home. It is not because of worry for their future, economically speaking, nor always because of the thought of separation—but it is the fear; How will they come out? Will they listen to the voices of wickedness, find evil associates, forget both God and their parents so that they rather seek the saloon and the dance hall than the home of their childhood? Of course, you may say: It won't be as bad as that! And, praised be God—these things do not happen in a great many instances. But the danger is there, and the temptations are ever present—and many a young man and woman who during childhood were the very joy and pride of their parents, succumb to the temptations and suffer during their youth such defeat that recovery is possible only much later in life or—never:
You suffer for that through many years which only was briefest delight——
But to comfort such parents let me say: Let the evening prayer find a fixed and permanent place in the life of the child from the very days of the cradle—then you have built a fortification about it which will guard and protect it at all times because it has become an essential part of itself. The evening prayer of its mother is the last thing the child ever forgets—that which it is most difficult to part with. It does not yield to a little push or two, but will powerfully assert its right to occupy the seat of honor in the heart, and it will insist that the quiet hours of eventide belong to it by right. And even though the child throw its mother's evening prayer overboard in order better to heed the tempting voices of wickedness, he or she will be conscious of restlessness and uneasiness in the depths of the heart, until that demand is met which the evening prayer makes. Yes, even though the child may time and again scoff haughtily at the evening prayer and thus apparently get far enough to push it away with all the silly "nerve" of the age of adolescence and to conquer it—that time will come, is sure to come, when the memory of it and the memory of mother awakens in the child's heart and revives in loving remembrance so that the evening prayer resumes its permanent place in the life of the child. The memory of mother will be a treasure to the child who only then realizes that the evening prayer proved a protection against the plentifulness of temptations. She will receive the gratitude shown her with child-like reverence, because she implanted the evening prayer in the heart of the child. That was one of the mother's deeds of love that became the greatest blessing throughout the storm-tossed time of youth. When everything else sinks into forgetfulness, it will still be remembered "what mother taught me"!
4. The Morning Prayer: A Gain
It is a little more difficult to give the morning prayer a fixed place in our life than the evening prayer, because in the morning we feel strengthened by sleep and are in a hurry to get to our work. But if we thus seem to think that we cannot find time to say a morning prayer, let us remember the old proverb: "In prayer is no delay," and if there are other reasons—petty things that have hindered us—then let us summon our will and say to ourselves: I want to! The morning prayer is henceforth to have a fixed place in my everyday life and in my home, and I think everything will go well: In prayer is no delay.
Just as the evening prayer because of the significance of time is particularly adapted as a protection against temptation, so the morning prayer for a corresponding reason is especially fit to prove a gain to us.
When we arise in the morning, the day is facing us, and it is of importance that we approach our work with willingness and high hopes—whether the work be that of the intellectual or the manual laborer. But, how often is it not the case that we approach our work slovenly and sourly—with the consequence that we feel it a burden and a difficulty. We do not discover that rest and that joy in the work which God bestowed upon it. The work becomes nothing but unwillingly done toil, and the day seems long and weary.
By way of suggesting a preventive I know of nothing better than to start the day with a morning prayer. It stimulates the willingness to work, to begin the day by thanking God for the night that has vanished, and to pray for blessing upon the work of the coming day. It imparts joy of living. It makes it easier to discover the rest and the delight in work, no matter how exerting that may be.
How often is it not the case that the man who is ready to go to his work, gets up silently and grouchingly, washes himself and sits down at the table: Breakfast is not yet ready, and his wife gets for this reason some nagging reproaches. At last the meal is served. Silently the man partakes of his breakfast, takes his hat and his dinnerpail, remarks sulkily that now he is going—and goes. Such a start promises a cheerless day for both man and wife. He goes to his shop or field with head bent low and his mind heavy while his wife takes up her duties at home—without cheer.
How different would not the day and the work be for the man and wife if they could unite in a little morning prayer and part with the words of the poet upon their lips:
Then gladly we go
Each to his work
Relying upon God's grace.
Thus gaining strength
To be of use, as God wills
In the very best way we know.
And that applies to all of us.
We all need to be told that we should go to our work with more gladness, rely more upon the grace of God, get more and more strength and joy wherewith to do our work so as to please God. To this end, the morning prayer is an incentive, and that is why I consider it a gain.
Just as the time of youth is the period when we stand most in need of the evening prayer because the temptations then are the strongest and meet with least resistance on our part, so we need the morning prayer the most at the time of maturity because it then is of particular importance that we
——gain strength
To be of use, as God wills,
In the very best way we know.
This does not mean that there is any time in our lives that we do not need the evening prayer as well as the morning prayer. Indeed, we need both throughout our entire life, for we are always in want of protection against temptations, always in need of gaining increasing joy of living and happiness. Therefore, let us give both a fixed and permanent place in our everyday life and thus try to become "steadfast in prayer."
And in that steadfast prayer the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer must be absorbed as an inseparable part.