“They ought always to pray.
”
Our wants are for the sake of coming into communion with God, our eternal need. If gratitude and love immediately followed the supply of our needs, if God our Savior was the one thought of our hearts, then it might be unnecessary that we should ask for anything we need. But seeing we take our supplies as a matter of course, feeling as if they came out of nothing, or from the earth, or own thoughts, instead of out of a heart of love and a will which alone is force, it is needful that we should be made to feel some at least of our wants, that we may seek him who alone supplies all of them, and find his every gift a window to his heart of truth. So begins a communion, a talking with God, which is the sole end of prayer; yea, of existence itself. To bring his child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.
For how can God give into the soul of a man what it needs, while that soul cannot receive it? The ripeness for receiving is the asking. When the soul is hungry for the light, for the truth—when its hunger has waked its higher energies, thoroughly roused the will, and brought fitness for receiving the things of God, that action is prayer. Then God can give; then he can be as he would towards the man, for the glory of God is to give himself. We thank thee, Lord Christ, for by thy pain alone do we rise towards the knowledge of this glory of thy Father and our Father.
______________________________________________________________________________