Saturday, March 10, 2007

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed,
saying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."
-- Matthew 26:39 (ESV)

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 foreground, let there be no expression of
the will 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 are
there together, the special desire resting on the universal
submission, the universal submission opening into the special
desire, is the picture perfect and the prayer complete.
... Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)