Puritans’ prayers shame me. I wish I could pray like them.
Before quoting one prayer (and assuming many of us know little about them) here’s what J.I. Packer wrote about the Puritans in his book, A Quest for Godliness . . .
“California Redwoods make me think of England’s Puritans . . . . Between 1550 and 1700 they too (like the Redwoods) lived unfrilled lives in which, speaking spiritually, strong growth and resistance to fire and storm were what counted . . . the mature holiness and seasoned fortitude of the great Puritans shine before us as a kind of beacon light, overtopping the stature of the majority of Christians in most eras, and certainly so in this age of crushing urban collectivism, when Western Christians sometimes feel and often look like ants in an anthill and puppets on a string
. . . affluence seems for the past generation to have been making dwarfs and deadheads of us all.”
Many of us presume 16th to 18th century Puritans have little to say to us. Certainly we’ve advanced far beyond those old guys! I heartily recommend Packer’s book as a cure for that presumption and for compelling lessons about the Christian life. Hardcover is available from Amazon for $7.67 (http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Godliness-Puritan-vision-Christian/dp/0891075798/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1445189177&sr=1-1).
The Valley of Vision is a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+valley+of+vision&sprefix=The+Valley+%2Cstripbooks%2C176). In there I found this prayer (I’ve changed Elizabethan English to modern.)
O LORD,
In prayer I launch far out into the eternal world,
and on that broad ocean my soul triumphs
over all evils on the shores of mortality.
Time, with its happy amusements and cruel disappointment,
never appears so inconsiderate as then.
In prayer I see myself as nothing;
I find my heart going after you with intensity,
and long with vehement thirst to live to you.
Blessed be the strong gales of the Spirit
that speed me on my way to the New Jerusalem.
In prayer all things here below vanish,
and nothing seems important
but holiness of heart and the salvation of others.
In prayer all my worldly cares, fears, anxieties, disappear,
and are of as little significance as a puff of wind.
In prayer my soul inwardly exults with lively thoughts
at what you are doing for your church
and I long that you should get yourself a great name
from sinners returning to Zion.
In prayer I am lifted above the frowns and flatteries of life,
and taste heavenly joys;
entering into the eternal world I can give myself to you
with all my heart, to be yours for ever.
In prayer I can place all my concerns in your hands,
to be entirely at your disposal,
having no will nor interest of my own.
In prayer I can intercede for my friends, ministers, sinners,
the church, your kingdom to come,
with greatest freedom, ardent hopes,
as a son to his father,
as a lover to the beloved.
Help me to be all prayer and never cease praying.
Admittedly, this is not a spontaneous prayer. It was almost certainly edited and revised. Even so, do you see why Puritans’ prayers shame me? These words surely don’t describe my prayer life! So much of my praying time is taken up by that one line, “In prayers I can place all my concerns in your hands . . . ” Yes, I can ask about what concerns me. What a gracious blessing; that is! But that first line captures a concept of prayer I rarely experience:
In prayer I launch far out into the eternal world,
and on that broad ocean my soul triumphs
over all evils on the shores of mortality.
“I launch far out into the eternal world”. How often my prayers leave me sitting in my familiar chair at my same old desk! Instead of my soul triumphing “on that broad ocean over all evils on the shores of mortality”, too often I feel squeezed by all the stuff of this mortal life. No fresh breeze of victory. No sense of triumph. My prayers may have reached the eternal world, but I have no sense I have.
That’s why from time to time I return to the prayers of these “dead saints” (John Piper’s term). After being a Christian for more than a half-century, I still find myself saying, “Lord, teach me to pray.”
And this Puritan prayer (like many others) kindles a spark that will one day hopefully soon launch me into the eternal world when I pray.
Recent Comments