What a treat it is to happen across some hearty words first thing in the morning. Like a sumptuous breakfast (but better) they can help bounce us out of any early morning blues and into the day’s adventures. Yesterday morning I came across a terrific few lines on prayer by George MacDonald. Here they are for anyone else looking for a spring in their step this summer Saturday morning…
“‘But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?’ I answer, What if He knows Prayer to be the one thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need — the need of Himself? … Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer … So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive: but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God’s end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.”