Christian meekness and prayer

One of the most comforting things about Christianity is its hope. No matter how trying our circumstances, God is at hand to help and heal us. He loves each of us dearly and has answers to our problems. His answers come to us as spiritual ideas, or angels, which meet our daily needs as we use and obey them.

To experience the depth of God's love we need to pray. But something basic often is needed before we can pray. It is the childlike willingness or humility to admit human limitations and ask God for help. Often we want to push things through by ourselves. Or we insist on keeping a stiff upper lip. Of course, it is true that courage as well as humility is a Christian virtue. But what we call courage too often represents more macho ego than true Christianity. By interjecting self-will, pride, egotism, and limited mortal knowledge into our motives, we interfere with humility that enables us through prayer to God to find wise and permanent solutions to human problems.

In a sense, true Christianity is an educational process. It causes one to put off false beliefs for spiritual ideas. Humility is as essential to this Christian process as it is to traditional schooling. Pupils have to admit they do not know something before they are fit to learn. When in Christian himility we are willing to admit we need God's help, we are ready to be helped.Then we find He is always at hand and that His blessings are abundant for exactly the need we have. Christ Jesus taught, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." n1

n1 Matthew 5:5.

But what if one is unwilling to reach out God? What if we are stubborn, willful, proud? All must yield sooner or later, and God has a way through His eternal Christ, Truth, to soften the hardest hearts. Naaman in the Old Testament at first refused to yield to God, even though doing so promised to free him from beliefs that were causing his dread leprosy. When he finally did yield, he was healed. n2

n2 See II Kings 5:1-14. "When human struggles cease, and mortals yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love," notes Mary Baker Eddy, n3

n3 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. "there will be no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death." n4

n4 No and Yes, p. 35.m

Are some of us today inclined to stubborn will and disinclined to ask God in Christian himility for the wisdom and love we need? We can also ask someone else to pray for us. So great is God's tender grace that when those prayers are impelled by Christly love they will be answered, and we will find himility appearing in our thoughts and lives like crocuses in the still frigid winter earth. Christly love is the holy awareness that man is actually the child of God. Though mankind often seems unyielding toward God, spiritual man, made in His likeness, never is. That scientific basis of humility is God's consciousness of His own all-power and intelligence, His sublime valuing of the perfection and infinity of Himself and His reflection. The man that God creates reflects all that God is, including this holy knowing, joy, and self-appreciation. Humility is therefore an inherent, beautiful quality. In the devine presence meekness is never absent. Pride is never present. True Christian prayer acknowledges these facts.

If we seem to lack himility and instead are puffed out with pride that bungles our lives or tenses our thought, there is an answer.So great is God's love that He never deserts us, regardless of how far we may think we have gone from Him. Take the simple ideas in this article, and think about them quietly. A willingness to do even this is expressing some of the himility we all have. This humility is a form of prayer that awakens our hope, as a little child's smile awakens our love. And it softens our hearts for the further prayer to God through which we find answers to all our needs according to His tenderness and grace. DAILY BIBLE VERSE And he . . . kneeled down, and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. Luke 22:41-43