Our Greatest Need – FESCH.TV

Our Greatest Need & FESCH.TV:

Get the Book!

At table after supper, when growing up on my parents’ market-gardening acreage, my Dad would say, ‘Get the book.’ One of my sisters would reach back to grab the leather-tooled covered Bible lying by the window. The book of course was ‘The Book’. We would have a short (it often seemed to me a long) Bible-reading, followed by the reverent intonations of father’s prayer.

We prayed for Roy and Rosella, missionaries in India, Howard and Georgia in Nigeria, and of course Dad’s brother Bert— and Doris and family in Honduras. We prayed for safety from accidents seen and unseen, for travel on ‘perilous highways’, for rulers and sick folk, and so on. One time we visited an uncle, a lay preacher, also a market-gardener; and after supper we knelt down by our chairs following the Bible reading. Our family prayed thus in our own kitchen for several years after, till Mom’s health prevented that kind of involvement. I knew these precious times with family until I left home for college.‘The lines have follow to us in goodly fashion,’ wrote the Psalmist. I agree. Yes, I too had ‘a Godly heritage.’

We may lack the discipline of daily Bible reading and prayer, feel reluctant when asked to read or pray at church or small group. It’s not always that ‘practice makes perfect’ but it almost always ‘makes better.’ We should teach our children to pray, let our teens pray in our services. Borrowed, written prayers can help: A Book of Celtic prayers, the Book of Common Prayer. Many such help us form words, content and even cadence.

I have often found it difficult to pray with Jane. I can pray before hundreds (I hope it’s not perfunctory, mere performance or duty, because sometimes as pastor or the religious one present, I’m ‘called upon’ to offer grace.) But it’s a challenge to pray in more intimate settings where one is so known, spiritual warts and all. Children are God’s little spies; hypocrisy may reign. Does our spouse want to hear out loud our inward confessions? O for a priest…

The Bible says God ‘knows’ us, using the same word as something more than social intercourse — which results in ‘begetting.’ The deep, trusting, giving, sometimes almost hauntingly frightening relationship we must accept with God Who knows us from eternity and forever loves us is a miracle of grace, is sometimes what we’re not willing to accept.

It’s never too late to start a godly heritage, perhaps laying a foundation of faith for our family for coming generations. Prayer is learned behaviour.. Learning to lisp the words in childhood begins habits as sure as regular tooth-brushing and begets later conversations with our Lord. It doesn’t matter when or how… but that we get the Book. And pray.

For disciples of Jesus, it can make the most incredible difference, more perhaps than we can yet fathom. And yet comes the invitation: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed are those who trust in Him.’ — Psalm 34:8,9