Article July 28, 1923 Issue

Prayer

AGNESS BOWMAN SLAYMAKER

As a little child, the writer was taught to pray, and many times were her childish prayers answered, as well as those of her maturer years. There came later an hour of extreme trial, when she turned to God in prayer, outlining her request, however, in a manner which, had the request been granted, the intervening years have shown, it could have resulted only in hardship and sorrow.

Could God, who is the all-loving, infinitely good heavenly Father-Mother, bring evil upon His children, even in answer to prayer? Yet the Bible tells us, "Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." But the promise is prefaced by a condition, which we sometimes forget: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you." What is this "me" in which we are to abide? Is it not the Christ, Truth, which Jesus lived and exemplified?

At the time of Jesus' extreme test in the garden of Gethsemane, his prayer was, "Not my will, but thine, be done;" and Mrs. Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 33), gives its spiritual interpretation: "Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me." In that wonderful chapter on Prayer in Science and Health, our Leader tells us (p. 1), "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds." And we have the Scripture of the thirty-seventh psalm, which reads: "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass."

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