"BUT HE DOESN’T DO ANYTHING”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25238, 29 May 1943, Page 2

" BUT HE DOESN’T DO ANYTHING”

Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. Gardner Miller I was told something the other day that made me sad. A friend of mine was visiting his wife in hospital. The doctors say that nothing can be done. She is very low and very despondent. As my friend was leaving he said very tenderly to her who is the love of his life. “Are you saying your prayers?’’ “ Yes,” she replied, and then a pause, and slowly and sadly she added, " But, He doesn’t do anything.” My friend was broken. As he told me, i could see the tears in his eyes, while his voice shook. All day long 1 heard the sad words, “But, He doesn’t do anything,” and I knew that there were many who were saying the same. There are two things about prayer of which I I am confident to the point of being absolutely sure. The first is that prayer is the mightiest power in the universe. And the second is that we have not rightly learned to understand and use this power. I have seen, again and again, the most amazing answers to prayer. I have known many who have prayed with a faith deep and sincere and nothing has happened. When it comes to illness, while I most sincerely believe in faith healing and have known of miracles happening, I know more whose prayers have, apparently, been unanswered. So, as I mused on my friend’s sorrow, there came thoughts that shone like little lights through the gloom. Prayer, I realised, does not stop the advance of old age and all its disabilities. Not that I do not think old age is beautiful. But it can also be very tiresome. We inhabit frail human bodies that are constantly wearing out. There comes a time when everything slows down and I believe that prayer to prevent this decline is wasted effort, for old age is part of God’s plan for us. The illnesses that come from advancing years are the natural results of the breaking-up of the human machinery, while all the time the human spirit is being liberated for the tenancy of a new body—one that can never die, in a new world that will never decay: It so happens that the illness of my friend’s wife is due, largely, to advancing years. And then I was reminded that God answers prayer by giving us courage to bear our burdens. That has been my experience. I count it the most precious knowledge that I possess. Nothing has given me keener understanding and readier sympathy with sufferers than my own experience that God never took my pain from me—l still have it—but He gave, and gives, me grace to bear it. As these little lights shone through my sadness I was also conscious of a creeping shadow, the shadow of unanswered prayer. I knew that many among whom God has placed me to serve were not old, and yet were greviously burdened and that they prayed without ceasing and yet nothing happened. To them unanswered prayer, while it has not stopped them praying, is a puzzle, the solution of which evades them. And then I was reminded that to Jesus there was No Unanswered Prayer. As I unhesitatingly accept the statements of. Jesus as final, I am therefore quietly confident that somehow, somewhere, the honest prayer is answered. I may not know the solution to the puzzle—indeed, I do not know—but the belief that Jesus is in charge of the solution gives me fortitude. Jesus had the boundless certainty that prayer is always answered. There were no “buts” with Jesus, We know that His own prayer in Gethsemane, and probably on many occasions during Bis lifetime, was not answered in the way He desired, and it was not until Be linked His prayer with the belief that whatever His Father did was right that He got power to endure. I believe that GQd answers prayer in the best way. That way is often, obviously often, not the way I long for, and you too, but “every one that asket'h receiveth,” sometime, somewhere. lam not sliding out of a difficulty when I remind you, and myself, that prayer is not a device for obtaining favours from God, but a method of communion with God. And it is the communion with God, the spnse of His nearness and the knowledge that He knows and cares, that enables us to take what life brings to us and refuse to be cowed. There is no immunity promised to any of us, but there is victory promised. ' And victory does not mean that troubles are taken from us, but that we ride on thfe t<?p ot them. It is true that many who are afflicted cannot think these things out and are sad because they feel that God does not do anything for them, but all the while they are within the circle of His arms and no harm shall befall them. Prayer, after all, is not a security that you will be released, or exempted, from suffering and loss; it is an assurance that through everything you can depend upon God. “Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you ” is an injunction to trust God ail the way, even though present indications seem to point to desertion. When we say that God doeg not do anything we are really forgetting that the issues of our lives are in His hands, and that what we suffer, while not sent by,Him, will be woven into His beautiful pattern for us which we will, see and appreciate some day.