I don’t know when I have prayed more than in 2020, and now I have carried the prayer over into 2021. This is a good thing, although the good has been prompted by a lot of bad. I combine my prayer with praise, with singing, sometimes with deep sighing for want of Jesus to meet us in the air. I pray as I go about my daily tasks. I pray when I wake up in the night. I pray when I walk around the block. I pray because the condition of the world concerns me—sometimes even frightens me, and I go to Jesus first for I know there is no other way. As Spurgeon says in this third paragraph of ‘John’s Doxology,’ “we may ‘pray without ceasing,’ if our hearts are always in such a state that at every opportunity we are ready for prayer and praise; better still, if we are prepared to make opportunities, if we are instant in season and out of season, and ready in a moment to adore and supplicate.”

Have you ever startled a bird at rest? They startle us right back with their instant uplift of wings and flight. I love Spurgeon’s analogy that tells us this is how our prayers should take wing. At the slightest nudge, good or bad, in this time of worldwide sickness, unrest, and rapid changes, we must see ourselves as Christ’s First Responders here on earth. When a flock of birds takes to wing the sky is filled with them. If we all pray together, if our prayers take wing heavenward, we will be in one accord.

Here’s a sweet oldie for your Sunday.

Paragraph 3 of John’s Doxology:

“This explains to me, I think, those texts which bid us “rejoice evermore,” “bless the Lord at all times,” and “pray without ceasing”: these do not mean that we are always to be engaged in devotional exercises, for that would cause a neglect of other duties. The very apostle who bids us “pray without ceasing,” did a great many other things beside praying; and we should certainly be very faulty if we shut ourselves up in our private chambers, and there continued perpetually upon our knees. Life has other duties, and necessary ones; and in attending to these we may render to our God the truest worship: to cease to work in our callings in order to spend all our time in prayer would be to offer to God one duty stained with the blood of many others. Yet we may “pray without ceasing,” if our hearts are always in such a state that at every opportunity we are ready for prayer and praise; better still, if we are prepared to make opportunities, if we are instant in season and out of season, and ready in a moment to adore and supplicate. If not always soaring, we may be as birds ready for instant flight: always with wings, if not always on the wing.

    Charles Haddon Spurgeon was known as the ‘Prince of Preachers.’ A terrific biography of him can be found on the Spurgeon Center’s Blog: Who is Charles Haddon Spurgeon. 

This photo is part of Skywatch Friday.