Have you noticed that man who, refusing to accept certain religious concepts on the ground that he doesn’t understand them completely, seldom has the remotest idea what makes his windshield wiper work?
Have you observed that the fellow who argues, “But I can’t accept anything so baffling to my intelligence,” has the fullest faith in his radio or his telephone, without anything beyond a sketchy idea of how they do what they do?
When ever I get into a mood when I feel doubt about anything in the Bible, I switch myself back onto the track of faith by realizing that no story in it is harder for my mind to comprehend than the hundreds of wonders which I accept in everyday life as routine.
I don’t say, when I hear in a Bronx flat a voice from Teheran or Mandalay, that what I am hearing is too incredible to believe. When I sit in a Connecticut bungalow and a singer out in Los Angeles comes into my room by air wave, I never think of saying, “That’s too much for me to swallow.”
Why should miracles of Holy Writ seem hard to take when one realizes they were performed by a Man compared to whom we are intellectual pygmies? Nobody contends that Marconi, Bell, Edison and Morse were smarter than God.
I believe in prayer unquestionably. But I think more emphasis is needed in churches and homes on the quality and mood and spirit of prayer. Of all things, certainly, that should not be slipshod, fumbling and hasty, except in an emergency, foremost among them is a talk with God.
We all seem to have plenty of time for other things of life. No man would think of going into a business conference, for example, without plenty of careful thought beforehand about what he is going to say. What makes us think that, in the matter of prayer, we can take out a few minutes a day for a “quicky,” often poorly thought out and poorly executed?
Prayer is the most solemn and most important act of daily life. It rates over all else. It is a “must” as they say in the business world. And while we should do it often, I don’t think one can talk with God without infinitely more reverence, patience, thought and concentration than one shows when talking to a neighbor.
Certainly, most of my neighbors wouldn’t even notice me if I were as casual, abrupt and hurried in what I had to say to them as I sometimes am in presuming to say something to my Maker,” for when you talk with the Creator, that is the one time when you are communing with One who cannot be fooled or imposed upon. |
