The Christian Leader
Boston, Massachusetts

If one desires to be a musician, one studies and one practices. The average man does not realize how assiduously the great artists practice.

If one wants to speak French or German or Russian or Japanese, one works for it. How hard one works, especially if his native tongue is English and he is seeking proficiency in a tongue as hard as the Russian or the Japanese!

So with the mile runner, with the pole vaulter, with the football player. One puts his mind to the thing he wants, one gives time to it, one sacrifices for it. All this is taken for granted. The law is universally recognized and obeyed in the realm of the physical or the intellectual. But how is it with things spiritual? Is there not a common impression that if a man is deeply conscious of the existence of God and at home in religious matters, he has been born that way or conditioned in childhood or blessed by God with a miracle? Far be it from us to deprecate any native endowment or any conditioning in childhood or any direct gift of God, but we are convinced that there would be many more sure, happy Christians if we realized that spiritual proficiency was gained in much the same way as athletic proficiency or language proficiency. In other words, we ought to exercise spiritually as well as in these other ways.

There is nothing much more sure than the fact that if we want the presence of God we must engage in what Brother Lawrence called "the practice of the presence of God." If we do nothing to keep some earthly friendship alive, never write, never call, or never think about the other one, the existence of that other one may become misty. If something happens to change the situation the old friendship may come to life.

Many a friendship with God has come alive for men facing terrible experiences in this war. Ricken-backer expressed the truth vividly in his narrative. A man starving to death in a jungle, walking what seemed endless distances, was kept alive by repeating the twenty-third Psalm. It is all very well to sneer at seeking God when we are in difficulty. The fact is that God is there all the time waiting for us to use the laws that He has wrapped around this universe, and if difficulty sends us back to Him then blessed be difficulty.

We do not urge less showing of faith by works... but we do humbly suggest that... a little more humble, sincere praying may bring results that are surprising to those who have never realized how many, how rich, how satisfying are the blessings that God has ready for all who will but ask.

Enterprise Bulletin Collingwood, Ontario, Canada

The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.

It is wonderful how a matter that looked very dark will in prayer become clear as crystal by the help of God's spirit. I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words and then jump up and forget it, and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's doorbell and then running away as fast as he can.

I do not mean that every prayer we offer is answered exactly as we desire it to be. Were this the case, it would mean that we would be dictating to God, and prayer would degenerate into a mere system of begging.... If our petitions are in accordance with His will and if we seek His glory in the asking, the answers will come in ways that will astonish us and fill our hearts with songs of thanksgiving. God is a rich and bountiful Father and He does not forget His children.

Rev. Russell Henry Stafford The Boston Herald, Massachusetts

If we will stop being empty-headed and stop surrendering to our unbalanced and insatiable animal nature from sheer thoughtlessness, and if instead we will think the thoughts that Christians ought to think, then we shall take off our downheartedness and put on a cheerful and creative mood as easily as we change our clothes. Nothing on earth can keep us from being happy while we keep God in our hearts.

Rev. H. F. Atkins Brixton Free Press, London, England

In Algiers there lived, years ago, a very poor tribe which eked out a precarious livelihood on two inches of lain a year. There was an old tradition of a vast underground lake thereabouts, but no one had enough faith to try to find it. At last, however, the French government persuaded an engineer to bore an artesian well; at a great depth an inexhaustible reservoir of water was tapped, and the poor parched village has now become a beautiful and prosperous oasis, one of the show places of Algiers.

In exactly the same way, when our needy and stricken world turns to God and seeks His way, we shall come upon undreamed-of sources of unselfishness, love, inspiration, and spiritual power, which alone will enable man to realize his dreams of a new world, "unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, and undivided by race, color, or theory."

Rev. James Reid, D. D. British Weekly, London, England

Our part is to wait for God. The phrase occurs again and again. It does not greatly appeal to us in this active western world, where we are apt to think that nothing is happening unless we are busy. But this is not a counsel of inactivity. God works through men. The prophets themselves were tireless workers. So was Jesus. He never wasted a minute.... To wait for God is not a method of doing nothing; it is a way of doing everything. It is an attitude of mind and heart. It is the consciousness of our utter dependence on God for the guiding and the power to do His will, so that at the center of all our activity there is a place of rest and peace.

It means the spirit of patience in the working out of events. We are often in such a hurry to see the fruits of our labor or the victory of righteousness we forget that God is at work and that we cannot force the processes of the Spirit.... Those who are seeking God's rule and standing for righteousness will succeed in the long run. It may not be a swift or speedy triumph. There may be a period of seeming defeat. The test of faith is in our power to believe in the triumph of God's kingdom through the long hours when the seed of it is ripening. This patient waiting for God is one of the fruits of faith. It is something more than dogged endurance; it is endurance with its lamp lit, shining with the inner glow of sure confidence in God.

Again, waiting means the condition in which we are quiet enough ... to hear God's voice. We are all so apt to allow ourselves to be guided by surface impressions, and to follow the impulse of the moment. We listen to the arguments of people round us. We are swayed by our own feelings. We hurry into action, write a letter perhaps, make some quick decision, and then wonder why things go wrong. We may even take it for granted that life is being guided by God. We may ask God for His guiding and presume we have it. But God's guiding does not come in that perfunctory way. We have to listen for it. We have to wait till the surface voices of self-will or the impulses of our own fears or passions die down, and the deeper voice of God's wisdom can come through.

Journal-Herald Dayton, Ohio

At length the day of peace will come, but will it remain? That is up to us; in our hands lies a continuous peace. Because we failed in the past the nations are embattled. Are we to fail again, and so contribute to a new war which will make the present cataclysm seem but a whisper before its shoutings?

"But," some may protest, "we did not desire this war. We are amiable, let-well-enough-alone people who have wanted merely to live lives of human abundance and pleasure. We are naturally good and have no complaint against our fellows. In no wise have we wanted this war and in no way did we bring it about." However, every one of us who has not directed the course of his life toward spiritual attainment is at fault. Many of us have been living a negative order of good which was handed down to us out of a positive past in which our forefathers built up a way of life and reinforced it with their understanding of God and His laws.

But, if God be important in the least, He is all-important. He and the ways He would have us follow should be out main study. We should direct our lives toward Him through day and hour and second. Out of such living would grow an established peace to which each of mankind contributed. Out of such living would grow an earth graced by the God who has said, "Behold, I make all things new."

Rev. Rudolph C. Burke Los Angeles Times

When God speaks, too many of us fail to answer Him. Readiness means a right relationship to God and a knowledge of where we are at present. Most of us are too busy telling God where we should like to go. We wait with the idea of finding some great opportunity, something sensational. That is a mistake. Readiness for God means that we are ready to do the tiniest thing or the "big" thing when He calls us. Let us be prepared for the surprise visits of God.