Every true prayer has its background and its foreground.
The foreground of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain
blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have; the
background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the will of God,
whatever it may be, should be done. What a picture is the perfect prayer of
Jesus in Gethsemane!
In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to
live; but behind there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the whole life
for the doing of the will of God.... Leave out the foreground--no
expression of the will of him who prays, and there is left a pure submission
which is almost fatalism. Leave out the background--no acceptance
of the will of God, and the prayer is only an expression of self-will, a
petulant claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who prays.
Only when the two
are there together, the special desire resting on the universal submission, the
universal submission opening into the special desire is the picture perfect and
the prayer complete.
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