October 17 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Psalm 43:4:

¹O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is....

Devotional:

The flower-bud of prayer unfolds in the soul of the child very slowly. Not as though the little child does not already have a certain early inclination to pray. But though the bud sets itself early, it is another question when this bud shall be developed.

For many months the little one was present when mother prayed, but he did not perceive anything of it, yea, not infrequently he disturbed her prayer by his crying. But at length a moment comes when through the prayer of mother, or of some other member of the family, he undergoes a peculiar sensation and comes under the impression of what is holy. Tender mother-piety then endeavors to confirm this impression. And soon the little one kneels when mother kneels, and when he is put to bed the first effort is made to teach him to pray himself. Then mother folds the little hands together, closes the little eyes and dictates a simple little prayer. And the precious one mumbles with his infant lips what mother says before him.

But in this the form is already ahead of the reality. The impression of reverence and awe before the Majesty of the Eternal Being is there. A young child even loves these first attempts at prayer. But the Eternal Being has not yet discovered Himself in a clearly conscious form to the infant soul. For this reason a young child learns prayer to Jesus more readily than direct prayer to the Most High God. What the young child says in his infant prayer is not yet his own speaking to God. He only repeats what he hears, and when he first weaves something himself in his prayer, it is not worship, but an asking for something which engages his mind in his infant world. All this remains a speaking into an unknown Holy sphere which is around or above his little bed. It all follows a steady but slow development. Extremely little shows itself, as a rule, before the tenth year of age, of prayer from an inward impulse of the soul to a God Who is to be addressed personally, and who is, at least in some measure, personally known. There are exceptions with children of five, six or seven years of age, especially when they die young. But, as a rule, the fuller unfolding of the flower-bud into personal and conscious prayer of one's own does not come much before the twelfth year.

Particularly is this true when back of that tenth or twelfth year there were some unfavorable years when the child was obliged to sit still during long drawn-out devotions, and the motherly tenderness of the teaching to pray turned involuntarily into a purely formal compulsion to keep eyes closed and hands folded.

What God Himself accomplishes during these early years in the infant soul, His holy angels know, but we do not. Only later on does the result of it become evident to us. And this begins to show itself somewhere about the twelfth year. At that age it is already noticed whether a spiritual sense has been quickened in the heart, or whether indifference to, if not aversion against, what is Holy, predominates. But if a spiritual disposition of heart shows itself, then it is about at this age that God Himself takes the mother's task in hand, and lures the lad or the young girl by an inward impulse to a first personal prayer.

But from this time, to the moment when the soul pours itself out in the words, "O God, my God!" the way is long.

In many cases the kindly, tender glow of childhood prayer is not a little darkened by the time maturity is reached. By then, an entirely different world of thoughts, from all sorts of books and experiences, has entered into the consciousness. And this new world of thought appears bitterly prosaic by the side of the poetry of the life of prayer. Or if it should dazzle the mind by a choice collection of ideals, which may indeed promote an enthusiasm for rich plans and purposes and expectations, nevertheless it is no more centered in the worship of a glorious Eternal Being.

And these two currents, the current of the practical and ideal life in its multiplicity, and the current of the unity of our life as it lies recapitulated in prayer, struggle with one another for the upper hand; and sometimes in this combat, prayer is forever lost. There are those, alas, who, though pious as children, have as men altogether lost the habit of prayer.

It also happens that prayer is maintained, and that it gains in seriousness and depth, but with repulsion of the world, so that the life of the world stands unreconciled by the side of it, until ofttimes a sickly mysticism or overwrought spiritualism more and more makes itself master of the soul.

But in the ordinary way of piety, this period of struggle gives place to a period of spiritual stability. One has now settled the relation between the life of his soul and his life in the world. The bark no longer drifts with the caprice of wind and wave-beat. A rudder has been put aboard, a compass put in place, the lee-boards can be let down sideways. So the soul can direct its own course as it cuts through the waters of the sea of life. And so, heroic devotion to one's task in life goes hand in hand with a life of prayer that ever more richly develops itself.

Even these two, the sphere of the prayer-life and the sphere of one's daily occupation, begin more and more to cover one another.

The moments of real prayer multiply themselves, because in the midst of one's work the lifting up of the heart unto God becomes more frequent and the ejaculatory prayer occurs more often, until, at length, a prayerful disposition of soul becomes more and more habitual. And, on the other hand, the whole of one's life's task is more and more brought into the secret prayer, and one begins to realize that prayer is not bound to single holy utterances, but that our whole existence, together with all its needs, may be committed to God and in God be sanctified.

So prayer grows in significance, so it begins to cast a benign shade over our entire life, so it becomes in increasing measure the strength of our life.

The saying "Fervent prayer is half the work" which is at first repeated after others now becomes blessed experience.

And so the moment approaches in which, at last, the words "O God, my God!" can become the clear, pure expression of what the inner life of the soul experiences and enjoys in its most intimate and holy impulses.

Coming to the lips too readily these words from Psalm 43, "O God, my God!" would be guilty egotism, covetous selfishness. An appropriating of the Great God to oneself. "My" God, without a thought of others. A sin of prayer so strikingly overcome in the "Our Father." Always a praying: not give me, but give us our daily bread; not forgive me, but forgive us our debts; not deliver me, but deliver us from evil. Never to stand before God alone, but in the fellowship of love with all God's saints. To pray, as a member in the body of Christ—which you are—not as though you stood by yourself all alone.

But the "O God, my God" does not exclude this in any respect. It has something altogether different in view. It springs from the altogether different meaning that God the Lord not merely cares for all His children, as a king watches over his millions of subjects, but that the King of kings has this advantage over all the princes of the earth, that He knows all His children personally, that He understands them personally through and through, that He sustains a personal relation to every one of them, that to each of them He has given a special calling, that He has reserved a particular task for each one of them, that He continuously trains each one of them for a unique destiny in eternity, and that therefore He not merely sustains one general relation to all of them together, but that over and above this He stands in a particular relation to every one of them. This relation is so peculiar that it can not be exactly the same with any one of the others.

"Our Father!" but as a father who has seven children is the father of them all, and yet distinguishes between them, and companies with each of his children differently according to the difference of nature, disposition and character; so is the Lord our God Father of us all, and yet to each of us our Father in a special sense, in a distinctive manner, coming down to us in a mystical way, and revealing Himself to us in mystical sensations, which bear their own character and carry their own stamp. He knows us, and we are known of Him in a way that can be the case with no other person who is differently constituted.

He is the one Sun, but glistens in every dew-drop differently.

Only this: the dew-drop does not know it; God's child can know it. And when this knowledge dawns on him, he kneels down before God, his God.

Now distinguish carefully.

On the side of God, this particular relation, which with each one of His children is a different one, existed from the moment of conception and of birth; yea, already before the conception, in the call of the elect from eternity.

The difference lies alone on our side.

Years of our life go by in which we know God and have a prayer-life before His Face, but in the general sense, as distinguished from the particular. We pray as others pray. We are one of God's children, but we are not yet discovered to our self as such a one in whom something special of the Father comes to expression.

But from the general, the particular by degrees separates itself. What lends us a character of our own, gives us a calling of our own, causes us to be an individual person, and to begin to enter into particular fellowship with the Lord our God. And now it is the unsearchable richness of our God that He, Who created and elected all these His children with their particular dispositions and with their proper callings, wills and is able to be God to each of them, in the way that best suits their nature and condition.

Not a general fullfilment for all alike, but for each of them that particular supply which he needs.

Not only His most particular Providence, but also the most special self-discovery of His Divine Majesty in the mirror of the life of each soul.

And when it comes to this, but only then, there springs of itself, artlessly from the heart, the jubilant cry of adoration :"O God, my God!"

This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."

The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit

Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.