» J. E. Miller,
PSALM XXVII. 14 27
upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God. Let us remember that God has always loved intervals. Intervals there are generally, if not always, in His best dealings with His children — intervals before He bestows His greatest blessings, intervals before He answers prayer. And a great part of man's education lies in these intervals. The intellect is humbled, the heart is curbed, faith is trained, hopes are pointed, promises are sweetened, God is magnified. And are they not the growing times of mercies — the darkness brought in for no other end than that the light may be seen in it ?
^ By prayer we link ourselves on to the inexhaustible riches of God. How it comes that, when I pull a switch down in my study, the room is flooded with light no man can say, save that by doing so I have linked my need on to the great centre of light energy in the town. So, all that we can say about those who keep their hearts open towards God and in the love of Christ is that by this means they link their weakness on to the grace and strength of the Eternal. But, mark you, the electric current does not break into my room of itself when my need arises. I have to make a way for it, and more, / have to heep that way open}
Tl Prayer was the white flame at the very centre of his life. To the throne of Grace, with unfailing mindfulness and with childlike simplicity, he would bring, day by day, his friends, his people, those in special sorrow, sickness, or sin; so filling his petitions with engrossed and concentrated intercession for them in their needs that he became wholly forgetful of his own. Once, when I had been ill, he said to me, " I have prayed for you night and morning for five months." And I knew that it was true. In his long life it was true of thousands of others. And he believed, with such intensity and simplicity of conviction as no man can ever have surpassed, that every word of intercession that he uttered went straight to a heavenly Father's ear, and found an answering chord in a heavenly Father's lieart.^
Unanswered yet, the prayer your lips have pleaded,
In agony of heart these many years ? Does faith begin to fail ? Is hope departing.
And think you all in vain those falling tears ? Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer; You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere.
^ Archibald Alexander.
2 Frances Balfour, Dr. MacGregor of St. Cuthberls, 532.
28 WAITING COURAGEOUSLY
Unanswered yet, though when you first presented This one petition at the father's Throne,
It seemed you could not wait the time of asking, So urgent was your heart to have it known ?
Though years have passed since then, do not despair ;
The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet ? Nay, do not say ungranted ;
Perljaps your part is not yet wholly done; The work began wlien first your prayer was uttered,
And God will finish what He has begun. If you will keep the incense burning there, His glory you will see sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet ? Faith cannot be unanswered, Her feet are firmly planted on the rock ;
Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted. Nor quails before tlie loudest thunder shock.
She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,
And cries, It shall be done — sometime, somewhere.
5. Let us wait with regularity. The most prominent feature of our waiting is too often its spasmodic character. Now and then we draw near to God, but by fits and starts, with long intervals of indifference and prayerlessuess between. And tliat is just about as hopeless as it would be to expect to keep our- selves clean by bathing once a week. Daily our strength drains away, both physical and spiritual, and as the one must constantly be replenished, so must the other. Even earnest bursts of effort at intervals do not count for anything like so much as the quiet, constant keeping in the love of God. Volcanic eruptions have done something to transform the earth's surface, but not nearly so much, geologists tell us, as the quiet, constant forces, the sun, the rain, frost, heat, and wind. And it is by the regular daily waiting, far more than by the infrequent upheaval of desire, that the power of God and the likeness of Christ pass slowly but visibly into the lives of His people. It is the daily meeting with God in spirit, the daily thought of one's humble task as God's call to us to serve Him, the daily sense that we are His cliildren, destined and called in Christ to fellowship with Him, the sense that we are not alone in our little corner, but that He is all about us, so that we live and move and have our being in Him, like islands in
PSALM XXVII. 14 29
some great sea — it is that, repeated and continued till it becomes the habit of the spirit, that transfigures life and lifts it to blessedness and power.