For the real good of every gift it is essential, first, that the giver be in the gift–as God always is, for he is love–and next, that the receiver know and receive the giver in the gift. Every gift of God is but a harbinger of his greatest and only sufficing gift–that of himself. No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best; therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find him, then in him we shall find all things.
Sometimes to one praying will come the feeling rather than question: ‘Were it not better to abstain? If this thing be good, will he not give it me? Would he not be better pleased if I left it altogether to him?’ It comes, I think, of a lack of faith and childlikeness–taking form, perhaps, in a fear lest, asking for what was not good, the prayer should be granted. Such a thought has no place with St. Paul; he says, ‘Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you;’ ‘In everything making your request known unto him.’ It may even come of ambition after spiritual distinction.
In every request, heart and soul and mind ought to supply the low accompaniment, ‘Thy will be done;’ but the making of any request brings us near to him, into communion with our Life. Does it not also help us to think of him in all our affairs, and learn in everything to give thanks? Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon: the thought of him to whom that prayer goes will purify and correct the desire.
These are good thoughts; thank you. It fits in with “in everything, give thanks” and “pray without ceasing”–truly transforming our minds. It’s where much of our effects of meditation and prayer comes from–from the ascetic and also real world challenges. A Catholic acquaintance of mine is going on a retreat soon–he often chooses the silent meditation ones. Sometimes, I think we Protestants miss out on a lot (though retreats are not necessary; there are lots of ways to incorporate prayer).
I feel more comfortable with this portion, than with the struggle about what the ins and outs of
prayer requests to an all powerful, all knowing God; though open theology makes me wonder about other ways of thinking about it. @ThomasJayOord
That is what One Thousand Gifts is all about. An Iraqi Muslim man became a Christian through reading it.
Giving thank in everything is fairly easy though – you can pretty much always be thankful, for instance, that a trial is not more severe… your circumstances could be worse. The hard one is to be thankful for everything.
‘How should any design of the All-wise be altered in response to prayer of ours!’ How are we to believe such a thing?
By reflecting that he is the All-wise, who sees before him, and will not block his path. Such objection springs from poorest idea of God in relation to us. It supposes him to have cares and plans and intentions concerning our part of creation, irrespective of us. What is the whole system of things for, but our education? Does God care for suns and planets and satellites, for divine mathematics and ordered harmonies, more than for his children? I venture to say he cares more for oxen than for those. He lays no plans irrespective of his children; and, his design being that they shall be free, active, live things, he sees that space be kept for them: …
What stupidity of perfection would that be which left no margin about God’s work, no room for change of plan upon change of fact–yea, even the mighty change that, behold now at length, his child is praying! See the freedom of God in his sunsets–never a second like one of the foregone!–in his moons and skies–in the ever-changing solid earth!-- all moving by no dead law, but in the harmony of the vital law of liberty, God’s creative perfection–all ordered from within. A divine perfection that were indeed, where was no liberty! where there could be but one way of a thing! I may move my arm as I please: shall God be unable so to move his?
Merv, this and the next make me feel hopeful. Reading the Westminster Confession last year for the first time, seeing some doctrines I knew vaguely spelled out precisely was really disturbing.
For example this part from Chapter 3 | Of God’s Eternal Decree:
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
There’s been plenty in MacDonald’s work that has been challenging or frustrating to me, but I appreciate how he was always thinking things through, obviously always asking, “Is this true?”
MacDonald’s “hot defense” of the goodness of God is probably the main thing that attracts me to him so much too. He has helped me parse or sort through a whole lot of wheat / chaff as we have received from our church traditions.
If his machine interfered with his answering the prayer of a single child, he would sweep it from him–not to bring back chaos, but to make room for his child. But order is divine, and cannot be obstructive to its own higher ends; it must subserve them. Order, free order, neither chaos, nor law unpossessed and senseless, is the home of Thought. If you say There can be but one perfect way, I answer, Yet the perfect way to bring a thing so far, to a certain crisis, can ill be the perfect way to carry it on after that crisis: the plan will have to change then. And as this crisis depends on a will, all cannot be in exact, though in live preparation for it. We must remember that God is not occupied with a grand toy of worlds and suns and planets, of attractions and repulsions, of agglomerations and crystallizations, of forces and waves; that these but constitute a portion of his workshops and tools for the bringing out of righteous men and women to fill his house of love withal.
That God cannot interfere to modify his plans, interfere without the change of a single law of his world, is to me absurd. If we can change, God can change, else is he less free than we–his plans, I say, not principles, not ends: God himself forbid!–change them after divine fashion, above our fashions as the heavens are higher than the earth. And as in all his miracles Jesus did only in miniature what his Father does ever in the great–in far wider, more elaborate, and beautiful ways, I will adduce from them an instance of answer to prayer that has in it a point bearing, it seems to me, most importantly on the thing I am now trying to set forth. Poor, indeed, was the making of the wine in the earthen pots of stone, compared with its making in the lovely growth of the vine with its clusters of swelling grapes–the live roots gathering from the earth the water that had to be borne in pitchers and poured into the great vases; but it is precious as the interpreter of the same, even in its being the outcome of our Lord’s sympathy with ordinary human rejoicing.
Not to hear the master of the banquet tell it! MacDonald’s choice of words there throws me a bit, but I suppose I should be keeping in mind the larger point for which he is enlisting this comparison.
His mother had suggested to him that here was an opportunity for appearing in his own greatness, the potent purveyor of wine for the failing feast. It was not in his plan, as we gather from his words; for the Lord never pretended anything, whether to his enemy or his mother; he is The True. He lets her know that he and she have different outlooks, different notions of his work: ‘What to me and thee, woman?’ he said: ‘my hour is not yet come;’ but there was that in his look and tone whence she knew that her desire, scarce half-fashioned into request, was granted. What am I thence to conclude, worthy of the Son of God, and the Son of Mary, but that, at the prayer of his mother, he made room in his plans for the thing she desired? It was not his wish then to work a miracle, but if his mother wished it, he would! He did for his mother what for his own part he would rather have let alone. Not always did he do as his mother would have him; but this was a case in which he could do so, for it would interfere nowise with the will of his Father. Was the perfect son, for, being perfect, he must be perfect every way, to be the only son of man who needed do nothing to please his mother–nothing but what fell in with his plan for the hour? Not so could he be the root, the living heart of the great response of the children to the Father of all! not so could the idea of the grand family ever be made a reality! Alas for the son who would not willingly for his mother do something which in itself he would rather not do! If it would have hurt his mother, if it had been in any way turning from the will of his Father in heaven, he would not have done it: that would have been to answer her prayer against her. His yielding makes the story doubly precious to my heart. The Son then could change his intent, and spoil nothing: so, I say, can the Father; for the Son does nothing but what he sees the Father do.